


Make doors to other countries

by tarteaucitron



Category: Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell (TV), Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell - Susanna Clarke
Genre: M/M, Pining, Post-Canon, Slow Build
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-08-18
Updated: 2018-02-13
Packaged: 2018-04-15 10:17:22
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 55,360
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4602996
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tarteaucitron/pseuds/tarteaucitron
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Jonathan finds himself free of the Darkness, with no notion of how it has come about, but a growing schedule of things to do.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

A light flickers, and a voice seems to call out.  Jonathan Strange, experiencing a sudden tug of longing, and intuiting that he may have slumbered a length of time Mrs Strange would scarcely approve, awakes.

He opens his eyes upon a dimly lit room, and his sleep must have been deep indeed because he finds that he cannot immediately identify the dresser that faces him, nor the candle sconce fixed to the wall above it. His head is upon a bolster which is altogether firm and unlike any he has lain upon before, and the bed itself where he lies is narrow and rather incommodious. He shifts, and finding his limbs quite numb and useless, rolls himself into a supine position by means of various leverings, awkwardly managed. A damp stain upon the ceiling, in the shape of a rain cloud, presents itself to him. It is in all points an unfamiliar room, and, if one must be frank, indicates somewhat of a netherward step in his circumstances, taking as a measure the furnishings and appurtenances.

His memory stumbles a little to reassemble the particulars of his situation, and he is on the point of calling out upon Arabella, who is surely in some occupation in the drawing room – wherever that is – when one point hits home: Arabella is _not_ here. She has not been where Jonathan is for some time.

Jonathan is seized by an emotion so quickly altering, and then altering again, that it cannot be readily defined. It is not however to be dwelt upon, for at that moment the candle above the dresser gutters once more, the door opens upon a darkened corridor, and a shadow steps through. The shadow stops on a sudden.

“Mr Strange,” it says.

“I’m so sorry,” Jonathan replies, at a loss. “I seem to have fallen asleep.”

“Yes, sir.” The man at the door seems similarly perplexed. “Forgive me. I had not thought –” he begins, a dark rough Yorkshire drawl chopped up in places into a fastidious staccato. And just as simply as that Jonathan can place him.

“Childermass?”

“Yes, sir.”

John Childermass steps further into the room, and Jonathan can see his face in the wavering light of the candle. He looks as a man must look when he has not known the blessing of sleep for some nights, though he is plainly dressed for bed, in a pale cotton chemise undone at the throat. His dark eyes shine like glass in the shadows.

“Childermass, where am I? And why can I not move my legs?”

~

Both questions are readily answered. Sensation returns gradually to Jonathan’s limbs over the course of the next several hours, to the point where he can sit at twelve-thirty that afternoon, with whatever degree of comfort is to be achieved in a hard wooden chair in a dingily appointed parlour, and eat some unpleasant soup. As to the where, Childermass – now clad in shirtsleeves and his habitual drab worsted – explains that the dispiriting apartment is his own.

The rooms are situated above a chophouse on Blossom Street a short distance outside Bootham Bar in the city of York. Childermass’s landlady, Mrs Wilmot, puffed up at first by the presence of one of those newly esteemed magicians in her parlour, offered a most favourable rate and the half tester bed. Later, upon being introduced to Childermass’s companion, Mrs Wilmot experienced a profound reversal of her generosity.

Much of this Jonathan has to surmise from a conversation that is terse in the extreme. In the uncertain passage of time since they last met in Shropshire, Childermass has not learnt a habit of garrulity. The evidence of the grimy curtains and threadbare rag rug, are however undeniably before his eyes, while the snores of the vagrant magician Vinculus, sequestered in a box room off the hall, do most undeniably rend the air. And the soup really is almost inedible.

So much for the present circumstances, but Jonathan has a more pressing interest in the immediate past.

“I must ask, Childermass. How was it wrought? What magic was it that drew me out of the Black Tower? It cannot surely have been Hether-Gray.”

Childermass is silent a few moments, and looks out of the window. Then having satisfied his curiosity as to the comings and goings of Blossom Street, he looks back at Jonathan, a thumb tapping at the corner of his mouth.

“You must forgive me, sir. I do not know. What do you remember of it?”

“Very little, if I am honest. I remember that I was there with Mr Norrell – I felt him most distinctly – but whether we conversed and what of, I cannot recall even in the most imprecise detail. I think –” he spoons his soup – “I think I heard my name called.”

“By whom?”

“You see, that I could not precisely say. I only know that I felt that someone called to me. Perhaps that that person was in need of me in some way. What sort of magic that may be I can scarcely conceive.”

“The York Society have tried several spells. I rather doubt that they had a great wish to recover either yourself or Mr Norrell in truth, but I let them look into my copy of Ormskirk. I do not believe they had any success with it at all.” He looks up and points at Jonathan with his soup spoon. “But then here you are, sir.”

He sounds rather disapproving after all, and Jonathan tells him so.

“No, sir.” His voice carries in it the most infinitestimal hint of apology. “Your presence is welcome. It is only the how of it that I am less certain about.”

“Well. As you say, here I am. And I believe that you are right: it certainly was not the York Society I heard calling out to me, nor any great desire to see them - excellent fellows though they surely are - that drew me back.”

Jonathan waits for an assent, but Childermass is characteristically silent upon that point.

“Neither would Ormskirk have provided the spell that could do it. Of that I am convinced. Nevertheless, magic it must have been, and if only we can hit upon how it was done, we may see about returning your Mr Norrell as well.”

“Not _my_ Mr Norrell.”

“I’m sorry?”

They are interrupted at this interesting point by Mrs Wilmot, who enters with a much chipped plate upon which sits a sort of pie. This she announces to be pigeon and onion. From her demeanour, Jonathan is almost led to ask if she shot the pigeons herself in Exhibition-square, but it is Childermass’s tenancy and he has no wish to put it at hazard. The subject of poor Mr Norrell is entirely dropped, and is not resumed for almost an entire day.

Having set the pie upon the table, Mrs Wilmot does not turn to leave, as Jonathan expects, but stands there with her hands fixed firmly upon her hips, as if she means to watch them enjoy it, which he sincerely prays she does not. Her eyes dwell unlovingly upon Jonathan’s ragged coat.

“Will the new _gentleman_ be staying too, sir?”

Childermass glances at Jonathan, though surely not long enough to register his extreme discomfiture. “Yes, he will.”

“And just exactly where, may I ask?”

“I’ve made room for one magician; I can make room for another. ’Tis no concern of yours where I put ’em.”

“An extra crown a week.” Upon which unreasonable demand, Mrs Wilmot departs.

Childermass seems barely to notice her leaving, but cuts into the pie, which yields most unwillingly to the knife, and reveals an unappetising interior.

“The bed in which I awoke, Childermass - that was your bed, am I correct?”

“You are.”

“And there is no other?”

“There is only the cot Vinculus uses, but I do not recommend it, even if he is not himself upon it.”

“No indeed.” A more appalling thought does not come readily to the mind. “So -”

“So you may use my bed. And I will sleep here in the parlour.”

“Childermass, you must know that I have returned from... where I was… with no money to my name, in fact no asset of any kind. Your generosity to me could not be more welcome, but I do not look for it, nor can I compensate you for it. And I have no wish to make your situation any more uncomfortable than it plainly is.”

“And you do not.” Childermass has cut a slice of pie, with no little effort, but he leaves it now upon the plate, stands, and brushes off his hands with a loud exhaling of breath.

“You are tired, I perceive.”

Childermass stares at him, with something in his look that speaks of affront, perhaps even alarm. “I am quite well, sir. You needn’t have any concern on that count.”

He is not telling the truth - so much is plain even to Jonathan, who has not often been the first to note and address the needs of others. Perhaps some suffering on one’s own account can sharpen the perception of it in those about us. Perhaps Childermass is an exception in this case. His exhaustion was apparent to Jonathan when he appeared in the bedroom door early this morning, and it is apparent now.

However that may be, since Childermass’s visit to him in Spitalfields, they have had an understanding, a friendship of shared trust in some degree, and Jonathan has no great desire to cause offence to his friend or weaken that understanding, by prying into matters of sleeplessness that are by no means his concern.

“Well now. It is as you say, of course. I am indeed most grateful for your hospitality, and for these - refreshments. I feel as if I had not eaten for an age!”

Childermass grunts a kind of assent. “You’d need to.”

“Quite right!” Jonathan laughs. “Quite right. But I had rather we keep that to ourselves, out of a natural fear of Mrs Wilmot.”

After a slice of pie and two cups of a rather poor wine Childermass has managed to extort from the landlady, Jonathan is fit for nothing but bed once more, and the disputed issue of where he should sleep is quite settled. With food in his stomach and a companion beyond the door, the narrow bed seems not half so strange, and the cloud-shaped stain on the ceiling has a rather comfortable quality than otherwise. With such inducements, he falls quickly into a brief slumber of the deepest kind wherein no voices call out to him and no longings drag him forth out of a profound darkness.

When he wakes, dusk has settled in the little bedroom, but there is still enough light to see by, and Jonathan looks about him. Here are all the belongings of his friend, which he had not noted before. Besides the dresser and sconce, there is a chest on the far wall, Jacobean by its looks and carved in arcades all along the front, but constructed of short uneven panels lighter than oak and marred with dark rings and slivers of bark. On top of it lies a walking cane, a thing of pale honey-hued wood, curved and knotted like a stripped sapling branch, and topped with a little raven in blackened bronze. It has a beauty of its own, and not a little power, Jonathan thinks, and wonders how Childermass came by it. It is a not a thing that Norrell would have considered fit.

A tiny shelf is fixed to the wall by the window, with some items belonging to a gentleman’s toilet upon it, and next to them a sad few books. With a sort of surprised shiver, Jonathan is suddenly reminded of a conversation about a book. Surprising, that is, because it is not a conversation he believes he has ever had, yet the name of the book - _Gatekeeper of Apollo -_ is clear to him, and somehow he knows it to contain one or two things that look promising, and perhaps even to hint at an opportunity of escape from dark places. Wherever could he have heard of it?

The bookshelf, when Jonathan rises from the bed to inspect it, contains no such title. The books thereon, sadly scuffed and foxed as they are, are entirely familiar to him: Ormskirk, Lanchester, that heathen little volume of Portishead’s. The latter is so warped, furrowed and discoloured one might suspect it had been dunked in a privy - and have deserved no better, to Jonathan’s mind.

A sound of snuffling and scratching from the parlour rouses him from this rehearsal of ancient bitternesses with a touch of alarm. Could a dog have got in? Fearing for the furniture, however poor, Jonathan takes up the cane from atop the Jacobean box, and opens the bedroom door as gently as possible.

The parlour is lit by a single tallow candle. Childermass is not to be seen, but the hedge magician, Vinculus, is at the table in clothes that would seem to belong to the outdoors, though not drawn quite closely enough together for modesty. With the fingers of his left hand, he is scooping up the last of the pigeon pie. When he catches sight of Jonathan in the doorway, stick raised, he pauses, mouth open.

“The Knight of Wands!” Some pie crumbs tumble from his mouth.

“You!” Jonathan lowers the cane, with a falling sensation of the spirit.

“So it is true.”

“So what is true?”

“‘The Knight of Wands shall forsake his exile’!” Vinculus tugs aside the scanty covering to his breast, and reveals a large amount of that curious yet indecipherable blue writing he had seen upon the man in Shropshire. “It is written, and the King’s Letters never lie.”

Jonathan comes as close as good taste will allow and peers at the writing. “Indeed. I could not say what is written, but it may as well be that as anything else.”

“Ah, but it will all come to pass, like the book I was before. It is only that we do not know what it all is yet.”

“That all sounds eminently sensible.” Jonathan leaves off looking at the magician’s rather fleshless collarbone and pulls aside the curtain on the parlour window to look out of that instead.

“You do not well to doubt it, Knight of Wands.” Vinculus is on his feet and prowling across the rag rug. “It all came to pass before, did it not? Just like I told you. ‘A dark tower upon a high hillside’.”

“You didn’t tell me about a dark tower, so that’s no proof of anything. And my name is Strange. You should call me by it.”

“You have many names. Mr Strange is but one of them.”

Vinculus is hard by him now and reaches out one spindle-fingered hand to clutch at Jonathan’s collar. He rubs at it most covetously, as if assaying its worth, which Jonathan knows to be minimal, and leaving upon it a quantity of pie crust and other sodden detritus that defies identification and adds nothing to the beauty of his habit.

Jonathan, for his part, is fast losing patience with this conversation which contains none of the matter he wants, and knocks aside Vinculus’s grasping hand. “Where is Childermass?”

“Where is he ever? Seeking for something, I dare say. He is a great one for seeking.” Vinculus spreads both hands across his bare chest. “He seeks to read me. But he’ll never manage the job alone.”

“Well. When did he leave upon this… _seeking_ , as you call it?”

“About half-past three.”

Some four hours then, it seems, Childermass has been abroad. A large space of time, to be sure, for an unknown errand. Indeed he does not return to Blossom Street until Vinculus himself has slipped out for the night, and Jonathan is again driven to bed with fatigue and a sudden but unshakeable fit of the blue devils.

Sleep is slower to come upon him this time, and fitful. The room is as drowning dark as the inside of an inkpot, and he feels himself quite paralyzed again, his arms bound like a Bedlamite, his voice choked off. Jonathan’s thoughts circle about, and at one time he seems to feel Mr Norrell near, a comfort in the blackness, until a voice calls out in tones of baffled love, and such a longing comes upon him that he wakes in a gallop of terrified passion.

“Who-?!” he cries out, startled. The room is dark still, though not so stiflingly dark as it seemed before. The dim form of the dresser and the arcades upon the Jacobean coffer begin to be seen.

A blur of light coalesces at the door, and there once more is his friend, John Childermass, a candle held in front of him.

“You called out, sir.” He steps a little way into the room. He is still breeched and shirted, though his clothing and hair are loose and stirred from sleep, and his face as tired as it was earlier. “Is there any thing the matter?”

“I heard a voice - the same I think - yes, the same!” His spirits are much agitated and his voice wavers most fearfully. “Though I could not say precisely - yet it was the voice of someone who loved me. Of that I am sure!”

To this Childermass has nothing to say, but his frown shows stark in the candlelight. Surely it is a most uncomfortable subject for him to attend to, and Jonathan feels a little ashamed of his frenzy.

“Sorry. I am sorry, Childermass. It is only that -” he swallows down the peach-pit sensation in his throat, “how long have I been away?”

“Near fifteen months, sir.”

Fifteen months! He had not thought it so long. And he has been missed, and thought lost, and desired with such a deal of strength that a species of magic has called out and found an answer in him, and pulled him back from his imprisonment. That is the how of it - he is sure. And now, can he sleep an instant longer, or sit and eat a pigeon pie? He feels quite frantic, and pulls back the bedspread, in his haste heeding neither threadbare shift nor naked leg.

Childermass puts out a hand. “You should sleep, sir. You have need of it.” Jonathan looks up at him and has the sensation that the furnishings in the room - the dresser at his side, the coffer against the far wall - have shrunk back, and that all there is in the room is himself upon a bed and Childermass at the door. “A year and a half will not mind another day. We will discuss it in the morning.”

Jonathan sees the sense of this immediately, and nods. The bedspread seems to settle on his body of a will entirely its own, and the darkness creeps in around him again, until the only thing to be seen is the candlelight fluttering upon Childermass’s pale cheek.

“Yes. Yes, you are quite -”

Jonathan slumbers again, undisturbed this time until morning, and when he wakes it is with the sense of a commanding purpose.

~

You might think it a simple task for two such accomplished magicians as Jonathan Strange and John Childermass to locate one woman, who has never had the least idea of concealment, and indeed Jonathan himself entertains a similar optimism as they set about the task of finding Arabella early the following morning, but such it does not prove.

Childermass resists Jonathan’s first agitated impulse, which is to upend the contents of a ewer of wash water all over the parlour table. Pleading his fragile tenancy and the piteous state of the rag rug, instead he retrieves a brass basin from the Jacobean box in the bedroom, and comes into the parlour holding it out.

“I see you have all the accoutrements, Childermass! Are you not the toast of ladies’ drawing rooms from the top to the bottom of Yorkshire?”

Childermass laughs. “I hardly think so. I am so often seen abroad in the company of Vinculus that I am welcome almost nowhere.”

“Short-sighted creatures, these Yorkshire ladies. Well, then. I dare say that their loss is my gain. Will you do the magic?” Jonathan gestures at the table.

“Ay.” He hesitates, but finally settles the basin on the table. “If you wish it.”

Childermass pours out the water and crosses it, and at first the shiver of excitement Jonathan feels may be due to the sensation of magic done by one whom he knows to be a magician but whom he has not seen to perform any magic of such a sort. Then as the water stills, an image settles into it, and Childermass steps back.

“There she is!” Jonathan cries. And so indeed does Arabella appear in the water, sat at a little table, an ironical smile upon her lips, her hair all over soft curls, and writing something down upon a piece of paper. At first he is so taken up with the sight of her, that he does not think to approach the issue of where _there_ is, but watches her write and continue writing until the vision blurs a little and in time becomes utterly obscure. After which, Jonathan sits for some little while in silence.

Outside the wind blows about most bracingly, flinging even the newest green leaves from the trees. It is a cold day for a young summer, and by nine o’clock, Childermass has gone below stairs and ordered the fire made up and breakfast sent.

After breakfasting on some stale buns and weak tea, Jonathan fills the basin on the parlour table once more and finds Mrs Strange in some conversation with Mary. “Look - it is Mary!” he exclaims, once more filled with enthusiasm, and is frustrated by a look of unassailable calm upon Childermass’s face.

He turns back to the bowl and passes a little time in smiling at the image of his lost wife as she moves about picking up willow pattern teacups and laughing with the maid, then stands for many moments in solemn contemplation, during which time Jonathan’s agitated excitement is at first subdued and then entirely overcome with the greyest melancholy.

“My poor Arabella,” he sighs out.

“She does not seem to feel it so much.”

“And yet, Childermass, I know all that she has suffered - through my own grave stupidity - and how she called to me when I was… where I was. It was Arabella - it cannot have been other than her. I must find her out as soon as I can manage it. That she should think me still lost - or uncaring - it is not to be borne.”

“No, sir.”

Childermass, whose fervour for watching Mrs Strange engaged in sundry menial tasks may be supposed not quite the equal of Jonathan’s, retreats to the doorway to lean a shoulder upon the jamb and pack a pipe. Jonathan does not at first look up from the basin, so engaged is he in sorrowfully watching Arabella inspect a silver teaspoon, but when Childermass slides one stockinged leg across the other, the movement catches Jonathan’s eye and his attention is momentarily diverted. When he looks back at the vision, Arabella and Mary have slipped back into the clear water, out of view.

“Blast it all! I beg your pardon, Childermass.”

“Don’t think of it, sir. It is a blasted business.”

After the third view of the bowl, having watched Arabella reading a book in a little button-back chair for some fifteen fruitless minutes, Jonathan is no further forward, and furthermore is beginning to doubt the uprightness of watching so intently someone who is entirely unaware of being watched, even if that someone is a person’s own wife. Outside the weather has turned fouler still; the sky is granite and raindrops strike the window pane with the pit-pat of thrown gravel, and the mood in the parlour is dark enough to match.

“This is wholly unreasonable of her. Why will she not go out so I may take a view of her surroundings?”

“If you wish to find her, perhaps you might apply to Mr Woodhope.”

Jonathan takes the bowl to the window, which, unthinking, he unlatches, whereupon rain blows into the room on a rapid gust of wind. He tips the water into the street below in haste, and fastens the window again. “Henry and I are not - that is to say - for some time I have not found myself in such charitable standing with Mr Woodhope as once I was. It is a considerable sadness to me. We were once very great friends.”

“Surely such great friends are not easily lost. Or not for ever.”

Childermass is smiling at him a little, once more in the doorway, as if he cannot make up his mind to stay and assist this melancholy scene, or go about some more forward business of his own.

The conversation is cut short, as a wet and ragged person in a most sadly drooping hat pushes his way past Childermass and into the room, where he shakes himself like a dog.

“Vinculus!”

“May not a man seek refuge from the elements?”

“A _man_ may,” Childermass says, and Jonathan feels the cut of it more sharply than Vinculus appears to. “I am not so certain about a book.”

Vinculus takes his hat off and waves it in the air to dislodge a quantity of rainwater. “Mistress Wilmot says there is to be a mutton. Good morning, Knight of Wands. Still here?”

Jonathan watches Childermass roll his eyes. “That’s Mr Strange to you.”

“Mr Strange to me. And what to _you_ , Mr Childermass?”

Vinculus displays no interest in the answer, which is as well, as none is forthcoming, but sits at the table, as if the mutton will appear by an application of his will alone.

“And what of your other master?”

It is then, and with a shock of guilt, that Jonathan realises it is in fact almost an entire day since they had discussed Mr Norrell, still in the darkness, and now alone in it. He had slipped from Jonathan’s mind entirely, but being now reminded of him, and - with no slight to the estimable Mr Norrell - knowing of no particular beloved one who might call him back from his exile through the force of their regard, the matter of the mysterious book must surely be raised.

“We are going to retrieve him, Vinculus.”

Childermass fixes a most penetrating look on him. “How?”

“There is a book, Childermass. I remembered it yesterday while you were out upon business. And then I rather fear I forgot it again. It has one or two interesting things in it. At least, I believe it does. I have no very clear idea of when I might have read it, but there it is. I am confident it will be the means of delivering Mr Norrell safely back to us.”

“What is it?”

“What is what?”

“The book, Mr Strange. What is the name of it?”

“Ah. Yes. I believe it is called _Gatekeeper of Apollo_.”

“I’ve not heard of it.”

“No. As a matter of fact neither have I.” He glances up at Childermass, but his expression is no more suffused with understanding than Jonathan himself feels. “I know that sounds rather lacking in sense. I only have an idea that persists with me that many conversations took place while Mr Norrell and I were detained together that I cannot now recall. I suspect that this book was the subject of one of those conversations. I could not rightly say why. You must think me quite mad still.”

“No, sir. I think no such thing. We will look for your book.”

“Just so.” Jonathan smiles, a flattered pleasure settling upon him with the acceptance of this new idea, and in his imagination he sees them striving together to recover the lost magician. “We will begin to enquire amongst the largest libraries this afternoon.”

Mrs Wilmot now makes an appearance with the neck of mutton, cooked to a sad grey colour, and set atop a mush of beans. Vinculus’s eyes light up, but Jonathan is set upon more important matters.

“Mrs Wilmot, might I beg of you a few sheets of paper.”

“Paper, now, is it? You don’t ask much, you magicians, do you?”

“And another candle, if you please. It is exceedingly gloomy in here with the weather so foul.”

Mrs Wilmot’s expression speaks most loudly of her disapproval, as does the parlour door behind her. When she’s gone, Vinculus begins tearing into the mutton with no thought to cutlery. Childermass turns his back upon him and closes his eyes for a moment, as if it is a thing he has witnessed so often before as to make it is merely commonplace, and yet which he cannot bear to witness a single further time. It is, indeed, a remarkable sight.

The paper and candle arrive, brought by a small girl, offspring of the same Mrs Wilmot, who bobs an untidy curtsey and has a farthing of Childermass for her efforts. The consideration seems not to please her greatly, but she walks off with it clutched in her little fist, in both of which respects she resembles her mother.

Jonathan sighs and looks into the table drawer for a pen and ink.

“Sir, perhaps it’s best if I write to the libraries. It is a sort of work I am accustomed to. And you may be occupied seeking your wife.”

“Seeking my wife... Indeed, yes, you are right, Childermass.” Jonathan is at a standstill. He perceives immediately how the two objects may not be easily united, and does not quite like the thought of it. In fact he feels at once rather vexed. “Then you and I must take these separate paths. And yet, we still do not know where Arabella is, nor if this supposed book exists.” In his discomposure, he dislikes the idea of the book altogether. Perhaps he has merely dreamt it after all. “How are we to see where either path lies?”

“Why have you not looked at your cards, Mr Childermass?” Vinculus pipes up from the table in a voice muffled with mutton and beans.

“Well, that is a thought, is it not, Childermass?”

Childermass does not look like a man might upon hearing a capital idea, or even a new one, but he does reach into the pocket of his waistcoat for the deck of cards.

“Move that plate, Vinculus. And the candle. I’ll not have wax and grease all over.”

When the space is cleared, he lays them out in a single row of seven, then begins to turn them over. The first is the Knight of Wands.

“That is me, is it not?”

“Ay, it may be.” Childermass is already turning over the second, the World, and third, the Fool. “There will be a journey. It is not a short journey, but it’s not a very long one neither.”

“Ah well, I am accustomed to a journey, of course, after my time in the Peninsula.”

“The North shall break his bounds,” proclaims Vinculus mysteriously.

The fourth card is the Lover.

“Why is this one upside down?”

“Trouble in paradise,” Vinculus says, pointing a greasy finger. Childermass breaks off his reading to show his teeth to Vinculus in a manner that is markedly unfriendly.

“It may mean some complication of your hope,” he explains, and turns up the fifth card, the Three of Coins. “But there will be some success, too. And a companion in it.”

The last two cards are the Knight of Cups and the Star. Childermass is silent, but not so Vinculus, who laughs suddenly. “Success!” he shouts. “More than you may even hope for, Knight of Wands.”

Jonathan smiles. The thought of success, imagined or not, infuses him with a benign generosity. “I did not know you read the cards, Vinculus.”

“He does not.”

Vinculus taps his nose. “I keep my eyes open.” And that said, all his attention returns to the mutton.

“Well this is most promising, is it not, Childermass? A journey, a companion, a remarkable success. Most promising indeed.  I think I will have some of that delicious-looking mutton. Make room, Vinculus.” Jonathan sits and his mind spins on to successes of all kinds. “And after all there are libraries abroad, are there not?”

Childermass has paused in gathering up his cards to stare at one or two of them, as if under pressure of that stare they might be forced to impart greater detail, if not an outright retraction. Now he leaves off that too, and directs his stare at Jonathan. “Aye. I believe there are.”

Jonathan clears his throat. “It is only that it occurs to me that perhaps our paths may lie together for the time being after all, Childermass. Do you recall that I asked you once before to leave Mr Norrell’s employment, and come instead to me?”

“I recall it, sir. But I am no longer servant to any man - I left Mr Norrell’s service of my own choice - and I have no thought of returning to that occupation.”

“Oh, no indeed! I had by no means intended such an arrangement. I thought rather that we might make this journey together, as, well, as equals - and _friends_ -”

Vinculus begins loudly humming an air that can only be of his own invention, and Childermass looks sharply at him.

“Shut up!”

“Yes, do shut up, Vinculus.” Jonathan turns back to Childermass. “I believe there is much we could learn together, and our hopes of restoring your former master must be greatly improved by the application of two minds to the purpose.”

“They may be.”

“I intend to embark for France,” Jonathan announces, slicing a large grey wedge of meat and forking it onto his plate. “And thence into Belgium, and -”

“I think Italy, sir.”

“Yes, perhaps you are right, Italy. Yes, a capital idea. It was there Mrs Strange was last heard of. The chance is passingly good she is there still. Arabella is not one to take an idea lightly into her head, after all, or to move flittingly from place to place. I will seek her more closely as I travel - it will be the simplest thing in the world. And - you will be my companion, will you not? We will call upon the all largest libraries in our way!”

Childermass keeps silent for a moment or two, while Jonathan watches him finish gathering up his cards, stroke at one worn corner with his thumb in a most meditative fashion, and finally put them into his waistcoat pocket. “As your equal?”

“As my friend and fellow magician.” Jonathan offers a broad smile, and it is met with one not quite its counterpart, but that, despite a measure of deprecation, looks a little hopeful.

“Then I will.”

Childermass looks him in the eye and Jonathan’s breast expands with an abrupt hope. It is a hope that has a great deal to do with a wife sorely missed and soon surely to be met with again, but perhaps as much to do with an adventure, new fellowships, new magic of startling brilliance. At such a moment all things might seem possible. “You must have some of this mutton, Childermass.” Jonathan says, chewing heartily. “A most delicate sauce of beans. I am quite delighted with it.”

~

At some juncture in the afternoon it ceases raining, and Vinculus leaves the boarding house about an unknown piece of business of his own. Childermass, too, disappears for a short time, but returns to Blossom Street at teatime and announces,

“I have an appointment this evening, sir. An old friend of yours, I gather. I would ask you to come with me.”

“An old friend? What can you mean? I do not believe I have any acquaintance in York.”

“I mean John Segundus. It is his habit to ride to York on the third Wednesday of each month for the meeting of the Learned Society. ”

Jonathan, who in the course of the last day has quite forgotten the existence of such a thing as a Wednesday or a Learned Society, or of any thing else outside these rooms other than weather, and could in fact remain in the parlour staring into bowls for as long as food and drink is brought and left for him at convenient times, is for a moment left blinking.

“John Segundus, master of Starecross School.” Childermass repeats a degree more slowly. “I have told him of your return, and I would not say that he doubts my word, but he is quite anxious to see for himself.”

“Ah yes, John Segundus! Of course. And he has his school at last? I am delighted to hear of it. An excellent sort of person as he is. Yes indeed, I am well acquainted with Mr Segundus. We once shared a dream.”

Childermass stares at him. “I was not aware your acquaintance was of such a kind.”

“Well, I must own I was most offended at the time.” Jonathan smiles at the recollection. “Although I afterwards found him to be a most capital fellow.”

“I have a favour to ask of him, and it is an unpleasant one. I believe it will go better if you are there to excite his good opinion. He thinks most highly of you.” Childermass’s eyebrows lower, and there is such a quantity of dark weight in his good-natured words that Jonathan perceives it is an idea that does not wholly please him. “Will you come?”

“I have not the slightest objection to going with you to see Mr Segundus.”

Childermass turns towards the bedroom. “We will set out after tea. It is my habit to have some conversation with Mr Segundus before the meeting, and it would be best if you were gone before the rest of the Society arrive, otherwise they will harrass you with their chatter, and may not approve our design of recovering Mr Norrell.”

“Oh certainly. I do entirely see.”

Jonathan is left alone in the parlour, and facing now the unforeseen prospect of being imminently in company after so many months, begins to feel an unfamiliar sort of discomfort on the subject of his clothing. It has suffered a great deal of damage in the time of his madness and exile, torn and threadbare, one sleeve half-unmoored from its shoulder, and sadly stained with he could not guess what. It was a thing for which he cared not the slightest amount when his wits were flown, but now restored to the position of gentleman magician or very nearly so, it might be expedient to turn his mind again to appearances. He knocks upon the bedroom door, which Childermass duly opens, a bundle of closely written pages in his hand.

“Childermass, I wonder if I might impose upon you for any spare coat you may have. I fear that my disordered manner of living in recent times has left my own garments rather unfit to be seen abroad.”

As luck would have it, Childermass has three coats, all of the same ancient fashion and drab wool, but all clean and in excellent order. Jonathan ends by borrowing not only a coat, but also a shirt, a neckcloth, and a pair of dark wool stockings, which it must be admitted are not without damage, but deftly mended and quite respectable. They fit his own calves well, and the little seam Childermass has sewn sits on the fragile flesh beside the hollow of his left knee. It is careful work, and Jonathan runs a thumb over it gently so as not to disturb the stitching.

They leave the lodgings together to the sound of an early dinner begun downstairs at the chophouse, and looking, Jonathan thinks cheerfully, quite a pair with one other. Outside the weather has lifted just a little, leaving the air wet with rain both fallen and yet to come. Jonathan matches his pace to Childermass’s long swift stride. It is the better part of a year since Jonathan has exerted himself in such a manner, and in little time he finds himself rather short of breath.

“May I ask - what is the favour you are about - that my presence will so assist with?”

“I may not bring Vinculus on the journey we propose, and I will not trust him to himself.” Childermass turns sharply down a narrow alley and Jonathan must speed up to a trot to catch him. “I wish Mr Segundus to have charge of him and continue our work on the King’s Letters.”

“You - and Segundus?”

“That’s right.”

“Vinculus mentioned you had need of help. I had supposed he meant that I should assist you myself.” The last he says a little quietly and, it might be inferred, with no particular intent of being overheard. Childermass, for his part, neither responds nor slows his step, and Jonathan feels obscurely disappointed. In the silence that accompanies the remainder of their walk he admits to himself that he has fondly expected his magic, now returned once more to England, to be called for from all quarters, and yet here he finds Childermass quite content in his own endeavours with a man of little magical distinction, and adamant that Jonathan should be kept from the society of other magicians almost entirely. It is really quite vexing.

Three streets away from their destination it begins once more to rain.

Mr Segundus is in the upper room of the Old Starre Inn when they arrive, seated alone at a long oak table. As they enter and proceed to drip onto the floor, he stumbles to his feet, and his wide eyes and super-evident delight at seeing his dear friend Mr Strange whole and returned are all that is needed to mollify Jonathan, who is content to flatter him with enquiries about the school at Starecross and with promises to visit it in company with Mrs Strange upon their return from Europe. Childermass says nothing during this exchange, but stands in a corner of the room with a characteristically dark look upon his face and his arms severely folded.

The favour, when finally asked, is granted without a murmur, though the succeeding half an hour spent in examining the papers Childermass has brought passes with a deal less animation, and a scholarly focus that may be tempered by one or two second thoughts on Segundus’s part.

“You need only feed him, and allow him some access to your cellar. When he’s got a capon and two or three mugs of wine inside him, you’ll find him most easy to deal with.”

Jonathan peers at Childermass in astonishment at this brazen untruth.

“I shall give it my full attention,” Segundus says, with a smile at Jonathan that wavers only a little. “That is, of course,  when my students do not demand the same. It has long been a wish of mine to devote a greater part of my time to this new course of study. What nobler subject could there be than the King’s Letters?”

“Oh indeed,” Jonathan assures him. “And you must inform us as to your progress.”

“I should be delighted. If Childermass will write to me of your journey through France and elsewhere, I will send letters in advance of you so that you may know how we go on.”

And so with much energetic shaking of hands, on one side at least, their business is concluded.

Outside the inn once more, the rain has slowed to a grey undistinguished dripping. Childermass pauses in the porch of the inn to start on a pipe.

“Well done, Mr Strange,” he says. “Now he will never leave off writing.”

“Well, be that as it may, you at least have Vinculus off your hands.”

“Aye. I will take him down to Starecross tomorrow before he sobers up.” He puffs on the pipe for a moment or two. “And then we must find some means of paying our passage. I have a stick given me by Mr Segundus’s patroness. It has some magical value, and the broker on Copper-gate has been after me for it for some months. It should serve, and since I no longer have need of it -”

“Sell your possessions? That handsome raven-topped cane? By no means! Nor will you be selling any magical thing of yours, Childermass. I have had some thoughts on the matter of money, and providing our way may take us through Nottinghamshire, I believe I have the solution.”

Childermass looks at him. He asks nothing, though Jonathan is quite ready to impart his whole ingenious plan, but merely nods, crosses one leg slowly over the other, and blows smoke out of the side of his mouth. Most vexing, indeed.


	2. Chapter 2

On the morning following their conversation with Segundus, Childermass rises early and collects Brewer from the Golden Fleece on Pavement, and by the time Jonathan has woken and dressed, he is outside the Blossom Street chophouse, loading Vinculus into the saddle, the latter still fast asleep and snoring. As he urges the horse down the street, he tells Jonathan to look out this afternoon for a man coming about the coffer; he is to take out the contents and let the man have it.

“I have no money to pay him with,” Jonathan calls after him.

“He won’t want paying.”

“Then what will he - want?” But they are already turning a corner, beyond hailing.

~

At half-past nine, as Jonathan is beginning a letter to Mr Godfrey Gatcombe, care of the Gatcombe and Tantony Brewery, Newark-on-Trent, there comes a perfunctory knock at the door, and Mrs Wilmot enters with breakfast. Breakfast is a bowl of porridge, thick upon the spoon, and the colour of milk paste, and Jonathan reflects that it is asking a lot of a man who has faced unknown torments and separations to face a day with nothing but a bowl of lumpen grey cereal.

“I wonder - might I trouble you for an egg?” he asks, with a cheerfulness that surely belies his expectation of success.

Mrs Wilmot narrows her eyes, which passes quite adequately in answer. “Where’s the other two?”

“They are out upon business for the whole day. If it proceeds according to our hopes, Mr Vinculus will be away from York for several weeks.”

“Off to steal some other folk’s wine.”

“Something of the sort.”

Mrs Wilmot folds her arms. “What about the tall black-haired one?”

“Mr Childermass and I will also be undertaking a journey which may last most of the summer.”

“But it’s not yet the end of the week. You owe me till the nineteenth.”

“And you shall be paid, Mrs Wilmot, I do assure you of that. I will send the remainder from Nottinghamshire, where I have hopes we will be accommodated for three or four days.”

“See you do send it. I’ll not scruple to get the magistrate.”

Jonathan looks up from his letter in alarm. Wholly unused to the sort of suspicion that accompanies penury, and at a loss for a response, he spends a moment wishing that Childermass were here to counter Mrs Wilmot’s threat. He would do it admirably, with all the gentle menace native to him, and send the landlady off entirely quelled and a little confused. As it is, she harangues Jonathan on the subject of the rent and some damage she imagines to the parlour table, and possibly even the cloud-shaped damp stain on the bedroom ceiling - though how she imagines it could have arrived their by Jonathan’s doing is beyond him - for five further minutes before leaving him to his letter, his hopes of a satisfying breakfast quite gone by the board.

It is a quick business however, egg or no egg, and Jonathan is giving the letter to the Wilmot child for the mail coach, along with another of Childermass’s farthings, by the time a man pulls up outside the chophouse in small cart, and announces himself as Edwin Haskett of Overton.

“I’ve come for the box,” he says.

Jonathan has quite forgotten to empty out the contents, as instructed, so this they manage together. There is little enough of it: a shirt or two, the brass basin, several further books, and a quantity of assorted linen, old but not much marked.

Edwin Haskett holds up a pair of small pieces of fabric and wafts them about, one in each hand. “Are these for ’is magic, then?”

Jonathan gives him a hard stare. “I believe they are handkerchieves, Mr Haskett. What do you know of his magic?”He bends at the knee and takes the coffer by two of its corners. “Shall we?”

Between them they lift the coffer and begin to shuffle out into the parlour with it.

“Oh, not so much. I know that he hocuses the pox away from me brother’s cows and in return I give him the use of me cart when it suits ’im. Sometimes he wants a thing taken to a place. Sometimes he just travels about with that other feller loaded in the back.”

“I see.”

They execute a complicated pivot in the parlour so that Haskett is backing out of the door to the stairwell.

“And what will you do with the box once you have it?”

“Me?” At this point the box knocks loudly against the staircase wall, and Mrs Wilmot is to be heard shouting up about damage and payment, and the magistrate once more. Haskett seems not to notice. “I shan’t do any thing with it. I’m to take it over to Mr Segundus at Starecross.”

“Indeed - Mr Segundus? Mr Segundus at Starecross is to have charge of a great many valuable items, it seems.”

Haskett looks up at Jonathan, and loses his footing. The box jerks downwards and there is a series of considerable thumps as Haskett, Jonathan and the box descend four or five stairs at one go.

“The magistrate!”

“Yes, Mrs Wilmot, the magistrate. I am well aware.”

Having apparently cultivated the useful habit of ignoring any thing that does not constitute a direct instruction or pertain closely to his own interests, Haskett once again manages to ignore this ominous exchange. “I wouldn’t know about that,” he says. And it takes Jonathan some minutes to identify exactly what it is that Haskett would not know about. He is forced to conclude that they are both much in the dark.

~

By seven o’clock on the next day, Jonathan and Childermass are seated on the mail coach and rattling along the turnpike towards Doncaster. The going through the outskirts of York could charitably be described as uneven, but the driver does not moderate the pace of the horses, and Childermass casts his eyes up from time to time, as if he could see through the roof of the coach to where their little case of possessions is lashed - rather loosely if the noise is any indication - with an air of expecting it to fly off at every moment. He had returned the previous evening after what must have been a rather trying day to find the chophouse shut up and Mrs Wilmot abed, only the bread and apple Jonathan had saved to make a late supper, and with a case to pack and other provisions to make, and Jonathan perceives that his mood is not a pretty one. They jolt along in silence for some few miles.

A young woman boards at Pontefract, quiet as a mouse and accompanied by a child, whom she pulls onto her lap and seems almost to hide behind. Both are dressed in plain calico dresses with little caps upon their heads. Jonathan greets the pair warmly, receiving in response only a shy nod. Then a most startling thing happens: the child, a little girl of around three years and rather grubby in the face from luncheon, sets herself to staring at Childermass with large round eyes, and after five minutes or so of her staring, Childermass looks down at her and _winks_. Immediately the child’s face bursts into a smile of such happiness that Jonathan is forced to look more closely at Childermass to see what on earth has elicited this joy. It is not immediately apparent, but the young woman, too, is now smiling widely and unabashed. Thus begins a conversation, largely one-sided, about Miss Lovell’s brother (for Miss Lovell is the lady’s name), who has been taken on as a junior clerk to the owner of a crucible steel mill in Sheffield, and to whom Miss Lovell and her little sister are travelling, the one to keep house for him, and the other to lighten her poor mother’s burden, her poor father being quite ill with his chest, and medicine being vastly expensive, which they will see is quite unfair when they understand that her father used to be a leech-gatherer himself.

To this complicated story, Childermass has little to say, but nods in places, and at length promises to write an acquaintance of his in the south of York, a Mr Oliver Bolt, who operates a benevolent society for the working sick of his parish as well as a number of adjacent parishes, and may be persuaded to be of some help to Mr Lovell.

Miss Lovell is writing the direction upon a piece of paper Childermass has given her, when the coach gives an almighty heave and collapses sideways. Its occupants are thrown down with it and the child tumbles from Miss Lovell’s lap. Childermass catches it up straight away and holds it safely in his arm, while he offers his other hand to Miss Lovell, who has landed upon the floor of the coach. She scrambles back up and onto the seat, now tilted at a queasy angle, and straightens her skirt as if all is well and they might start off again at any minute. The child meanwhile passes a few moments unsure about its safety, then starts in with a bitter squalling, not from any hurt, but rather from shock at the sudden overthrow of its comfort.

“There now. There now,” Childermass says, his voice at once both gruff and peculiarly soft, and he agitates the child gently in a manner that seems to calm it at once. Then he turns to Jonathan. “Are you well, sir?”

“Yes, Childermass, I believe I am quite all right.”

At which point a door opens somewhat above them, and the coachman peers in. “We’ve thrown a wheel,” he says, in case that event were in any doubt. “You’ll all have to get out.”  
The axle proves unbroken, which the coachman announces proudly to the unhoused travellers, so that it becomes a minor matter of reseating the wheel and tightening various things Jonathan does not catch the name of. For this, Childermass is pressed into service, and once the horses are uncoupled and hobbled a short distance away, he must first climb on top of the coach with the coachman to untie the luggage, while Jonathan hovers by the errant wheel, quite uselessly.

“May I give any assistance?” he asks.

The coachman clicks his tongue at him. “No, sir,” he says, as if the question is the worst kind of impertinence. “Please remain with the lady.”

Childermass has his shoulder to the axle, lifting the fallen side of the coach, when naturally it begins to rain.

“Damn this weather!” Jonathan exclaims, then darts a glance at Miss Lovell, who is holding her little sister’s head against her skirts and staring, large-eyed, at the ground. “I do beg your pardon.” She nods, mute. “Perhaps we should stand under these trees here out of the rain.”

It is a thing altogether tricky, as it transpires, to reattach a wheel to a stagecoach and to tighten whatever the things are that need tightening. After half an hour of lifting and stumbling in the rain, Childermass and the coachman are quite wet through, and generously spattered with mud. The wheel, however, is reseated, and the men may begin tying the baggage back on to the roof of the coach. When the horses are back in harness and the journey resumed, Childermass at first proposes to sit with the coachman to prevent his damaging the interior with rainwater and mud, but the younger Miss Lovell, after three or four minutes of travelling thus, and untrusting of the coach on general terms, begins to howl and will not stop until Childermass is safely back inside.

It is late in the evening when they arrive at the Reindeer Inn in Doncaster. Miss Lovell and her sister, who will lodge the week in town with a cousin before continuing to Sheffield, take their leave of Jonathan and Childermass, the one with a shy curtsey and the other with a strong embrace of Childermass’s right leg. Childermass pats the little girl’s head and promises to write to Mr Bolt as soon as he is able.

At this late hour, the landlord at the Reindeer is able to provide only one little room on the second floor with one little bed. Jonathan and Childermass sit by the fire in the taproom and eat rabbit and boiled potatoes and drink ale while it is made ready, and for the first time in the day Jonathan feels a warm benevolence break out within him.

“I had no notion you were so skilled with small children, Childermass,” he says through a mouthful of potatoes.

“I was one once.”

Jonathan laughs. “A scruffy little urchin, I daresay.”

“Aye.” He smiles with one corner of his mouth. “No end of trouble.”

Childermass does not elaborate, and Jonathan is left to speculate to himself about the maturing of that troublesome urchin into the strong and competent man sitting at his right hand, guarding a trove of secrets, and going somewhat efficiently about draining his jug of ale.

“We should see if the landlord has any of Gatcombe and Tantony’s Entire Stout,” Jonathan says, rising from his chair. “That will see us off to bed.”

A short time after eleven o’clock Childermass goes up. Jonathan remains for a little in the taproom, finishing his last of several glasses of stout and talking to the landlord and his wife - who, on discovering he is a magician, have immediately begun pressing him with ideas for increasing their profit by magic - about the inadvisability of applying spells of multiplication to foodstuffs and firewood, since they may be regarded as dangerously unstable. When he has bid them goodnight at long last, and goes up to the little room on the second floor, he finds Childermass standing by the window, his hands in the wash bowl, scrubbing at some dark thing with a cake of soap. His legs are bare below his breeches, his feet naked on the floor boards, and Jonathan perceives that the item receiving the scrubbing must be his stockings.

Childermass turns when he hears the door close, and regards Jonathan for a second or two, the light of the tiny fire and a single candle revealing little of his expression, before explaining, “They were muddy.”

“Just so.”

Both of them look then at Jonathan’s stockings, as if taken by a single shared thought, but if Childermass’s instinct is to perform the same service for him, he nevertheless refrains from offering it.

“Well, I’m for bed. I think we must throw our lots in together tonight, Childermass, since there is no convenient chair. And I must own I am feeling quite fatigued from the journey. I do assure you I have been told I am a most silent and deep sleeper -” which is true, although Jonathan, if pressed, would have to admit that he hadn’t been told any such thing for some years, and that his sleeping patterns in his madness and afterwards have been irregular to say the least. “We shan’t offer each other the least inconvenience.”

Childermass’s hands leave off scrubbing and lie still in the wash water, but he does not look up. “If you are sure, sir.”

“I am - quite sure!” Jonathan navigates his way around the bed, knocking over Childermass’s raven-topped cane with a clatter - “Oh, I beg your pardon” - and righting it again against the bedpost. “And you cannot tell me you would not rather sleep upon a bed, after your exertions this afternoon.”

“Very well. I should rather sleep upon a bed.”

Childermass finishes washing his stockings and hangs them upon the mantle over the fire, and while he is thus employed, Jonathan removes his own clothes, and slips into the bed, taking care to leave ample room, such that one foot rests quite on the edge of the mattress. It cannot be helped. Childermass eyes him briefly before sitting on the other side of the bed to take off his waistcoat and breeches, and then he snuffs the candle and climbs in under the blankets. They endeavour to lie without touching in any part, but it is achieved only with some muscular effort, and it takes rather longer than Jonathan is used before he falls into an unquiet sleep.

Some time before dawn, Jonathan wakes to a strange running of his heart. The fire is out, a smothering darkness fills the little room, and he has the familiar sensation that someone was calling out to him in a dream, though it seems a plea with less pain in it than before, and more as if he has been merely in some employment elsewhere, or missing for an afternoon. Beside him, Childermass is turned towards him on his side and breathing rather quickly, as if he too is troubled by dreams. Jonathan tries to turn away, moving his body with care so as not to wake him, but his shirt is caught somehow, and when he reaches down to free it, he finds Childermass’s hand closed tightly around a fistful of cotton near his waist. Jonathan pulls gently at the shirt and at first causes Childermass merely to murmur and hold tighter to it, then slowly his grip loosens and the shirt is freed. Jonathan turns and lies facing into the darkness, painfully aware of his friend resting just behind him, and of each breath that stirs against the nape of his neck. 

When next he wakes, it is light. Childermass has risen and is standing at the window in shirt and breeches, holding his stockings up to the light. Jonathan watches as he steps back to sit on the edge of the bed and draw the stockings on.

It occurs to Jonathan then that Childermass has no idea of being observed, and he feels somewhat of disgust at this sudden new habit of watching people, so falls noisily onto his back, coughing a little. Childermass turns, his hands busy at the buttons of his waistcoat.

“You are awake.” He stands and pulls on his cuffs to straighten the shoulders of his shirt. “I will ask for some breakfast. We must be about it quickly. The stage leaves in twenty minutes. Are you well, Mr Strange?”

Jonathan has placed a hand over his eyes. “Yes. Quite well, thank you, Childermass. Although rather badly in want of some breakfast. Perhaps - perhaps a little too much ale last night.”

“I’ll see about it.”

Jonathan listens as the door opens and closes, then lowers his hand, and lets out a loud breath.

Breakfast is brought up while Jonathan is completing the very briefest of toilets, along with a letter arrived overnight on the post. The return direction is Mr Godfrey Gatcombe, Middle-gate, Newark. Jonathan takes it up feeling a little self-satisfied.

“Now then, let us see what Mr Gatcombe has to say.”

What he has to say conveys both astonishment (regarding Mr Strange’s return to England) and fervour (regarding the welcome he must receive at Middle-gate), and contains several descriptions of the delights that await Mr Strange in Newark. Mr Gatcombe, it seems, has understood the arrangement that Jonathan has in mind,

_...but you must assure yourself, Mr Strange, that all such matters will meet with the very great discretion which I believe is due to any issue of business at all. Mr Tantony and I are the very secretest of men, and accustomed to a great deal of privacy in all our transactions._

“Well. What do you make of that, Childermass? We shall be lodging with Mr Gatcombe himself, with all the pleasures of Newark at our disposal, and what a fine discreet time it may afford us!”

“It is a polite letter, sir. And should answer for the money we need without exposing you to ridicule.”

Jonathan folds up the letter. “I am being frivolous and you are cross with me. I am sorry for it; it is a bad habit of mine. I assure you I will be the very soul of condescension to the excellent Mr Gatcombe and Mr Tantony.”

“Just assure me you’ll be on that coach in five minutes.”

“I assure you of that too,” Jonathan says, meek as milk, and standing, folds the letter and tucks it into his coat pocket.

He is indeed on the coach, having pocketed from the breakfast tray a sweet roll, which he proceeds to eat as they make their way out of Doncaster. They are at first alone, as they were upon the previous day, then at the first change of horses at Blyth, they are joined by a grocer and his wife making a visit to cousins in Derby, one of the cousins being in an interesting condition; a nervous young solicitor on the first part of his grand journey down to London to take up a place at a company in Fetter-lane; and a stonemason and his family, who finding little work in this part of Nottinghamshire have determined upon Worcester, where there is reputed to be a great effort underway to restore the cathedral. Childermass has, of course, suggestions of assistance to make to all three parties, and so the journey goes on with Jonathan worrying at a loose button upon his borrowed coat with his right thumb, wishing he had procured some reading matter at the inn in Doncaster, flinching from the point of the young solicitor’s elbow at every turning, and thinking with somewhat bitter satisfaction of all the letters Childermass will have to write on their arrival in Newark.

Not all their fellow travellers are so grateful for Childermass’s assistance. At Tuxford, after a swift luncheon of cheese and roast chicken, a young fair-haired vicar boards the coach, and proceeds to complain for half an hour about how he must travel by mail coach, then discoursing upon the poor living afforded him by his meagre portion of church land, and the parish priest of neighbouring Boughton who has quite six smallholdings and is to be seen abroad three times a week in his phaeton. Childermass, after watching some while with a rather bitter expression, suggests that he might apply to someone with the preposterous name of Sir Juckes Juckes-Clifton, with whom Childermass once transacted a lucrative piece of business on his former master’s behalf, and whose parish, Jonathan is able to surmise, is small in consituency, offering little in the way of career preferment, while benefiting from a large living and an ancient and increasingly incapable parson. 

The young clergyman stares openly and quite rudely at Childermass, then turns to Jonathan and says, “Will you govern your servant, sir?”

“I beg your pardon?” Jonathan is pricked to a sudden anger. “What my friend Mr Childermass suggests seems to me quite the happiest solution to a problem very much beneath his, or indeed any one’s notice at all. Furthermore, Mr Childermass is not my servant. I do not govern him, nor will I ever seek to.”

The clergyman’s mouth falls open. “Oh! Your friend! I do understand how it is. And I took you for a gentleman. To be so deceived!”

“I cannot begin to comprehend your meaning, sir. But I wish you to know that I desire no further conversation with you.”

Childermass rests a hand upon Jonathan’s arm to bring an end to it, and Jonathan looks up at him, unprepared to see quite how easily Childermass takes the insult, and quite how much further that excites Jonathan’s own anger. The clergyman emits a hiss of breath and some unintelligible commentary, and the remainder of the journey to Newark is spent in a thick silence.

It is a short walk from the inn where they alight, and Jonathan has ten minutes to recover his temper and to anticipate the delights of Newark, which on first acquaintance seem to consist of a sickly fog of malt and hops and a sky dismal with the smoke from the line of brewery chimneys set along the Trent. At six o’clock in the evening, the people of the town move quickly along its streets, their coat collars raised as if it were raining quite hard, which for once it is not.

The house at Middle-gate is grand in a rather modern way, five-bayed, with an ornamented pediment set atop its third floor and Grecian guttae anywhere space will allow. The front door is set in a vast columned portico, and Jonathan’s knock is answered by a servant in a startling scarlet habit, with white silk stockings and a powdered wig. The servant bows low and announces to the floor that Mr Gatcombe and Mr Tantony await Mr Strange and his companion in the library.

They enter the house through a hallway carpeted in rich green and blue, and Jonathan gives Childermass what he supposes to be a speaking look. “I hope they will not regard my loose button!”

It may be said that John Childermass and Jonathan Strange are no strangers to a library, but this is such a one as neither have laid eyes upon. It contains few enough books, but those it has are displayed to advantage in dark green leather bindings with gold tooling upon the spines, set in a squat glass-fronted bookcase, all over gilt wreaths. The furniture is no less surprising, two gilt-framed armchairs and a sopha, their seats all stuffed full enough to bow upwards almost in a half-circle, and then set atop with peridot green velvet cushions. The most marvellous of all are the gentlemen themselves, both in cream silk breeches and velvet coats; the one, Mr Tantony, seated at the end of the sopha, the other, Mr Gatcombe, perched upon its arm. 

“Welcome, Mr Strange, most welcome indeed to our home!” Godfrey Gatcombe rises from his place. “And you must be Mr Childermass. You are most welcome, too.”

Gatcombe clasps one hand after the other, and Jonathan does not know who is more amazed out of himself or Childermass, for neither it seems can think of any thing to say.

When Mr Tantony also rises, offering a generous smile, Jonathan finds his voice. “Mr Tantony, permit me to introduce my good friend John Childermass.”

Tantony nods with a most evident delight, and takes his turn at the hand-clasping, while Childermass offers a “how d’ye do” in a rather uncertain tone.

“And how has your journey been from York? Are you too fatigued for dinner? We have had cook prepare three courses. I hope that will suit.”

“That will suit perfectly, Mr Gatcombe. We are exceedingly obliged to you.”

“Splendid. We will order it ready in half an hour. In the meantime Balfour -” here he indicates the servant in the magnificent scarlet - “will show you your room, and will wait upon you for any thing you require for your comfort.”

“Our -?”

“Your room, Mr Strange. Mr Childermass and yourself both must need a little repose after your journey. We will have all the time in the world to speak of our business over dinner.”

“Oh indeed.” Jonathan struggles a little for some polite forms. “Most hospitable.” He turns to Childermass, who, other than a rather rapid blink, is displaying no exterior forms of astonishment. “After you, Childermass.”

When Balfour has set their small store of clothes in the linen press and bowed his way out of the bedchamber, Jonathan leans upon the door and is rather surprised to find himself laughing.

“What on earth can have led them to think -?”

Childermass, for his part, is examining his brass bowl for any defect sustained on the journey. “What do you suppose, sir?

“I confess I am at a loss. What is it that they have seen here and misunderstood?”

“They see a gentleman travelling in the company of a man of lower class who is not his servant. It is not the only conclusion to be drawn, but it is a reasonable one. Can you not have realised -?” He sounds a little exasperated. “How did you introduce me to them in your letter?”

“As my friend, just as that. And my companion, as we agreed. And perhaps I may have said that you were Mr Norrell’s former man of business - purely to add weight to our cause in case their disposition is a little more Norrellite in these days.”

“Then there is your answer. And my appearance will have served to confirm their understanding.” 

Jonathan feels suddenly as if his own understanding has been pared away to reveal a set of circumstances hitherto entirely hidden to him. “You _are_ my friend are you not?”

“I am.” Childermass looks up at Jonathan, a frown upon his face and the brass bowl dangling in his grip.

It is something of a relief to hear that so much at least is certain, but Jonathan is still greatly concerned with how they must proceed. “This is indeed a muddle. I fear it may be a little awkward to untangle it all now.” He thumbs the loose coat button in some discomfort. “That is to say, I have no wish to offend Mr Gatcombe and Mr Tantony in any degree. We are after all, as you yourself have pointed out, Childermass, much reliant upon them for the means of our travel.”

“We are.”

“Perhaps, therefore, we must - for the time being at least - endure their misapprehension. Only provided it is not too uncomfortable for you, Childermass.”

Childermass sets the bowl down on top of a commode in the corner of the room, and arranges himself to lean a hip upon it. “I’ve had many things thought about me in my life. This is not one I’ve a particular inclination to take offence to.” 

“Then it is settled.” Jonathan straightens and folds his hands behind his back to still them. He lets a confident smile answer for the curious flurry of nerves he feels. “We shall - allow our hosts to believe what it pleases them to believe, and we will depart from their house in due course without offence or harm, and in a considerably more favourable position than we entered it.”

“Give that coat here, then.” Childermass holds out a hand. “I will repair the fastening in a bit.”

In the space between their retirement and the appointed hour for dinner, much is accomplished. Childermass writes four letters and summons Balfour for their despatch, then sits at his ease on an ornate cushioned chair with his legs crossed and stitches a button. Jonathan, at Childermass’s prompting, passes ten minutes gazing into the brass bowl, and finally sees Arabella take up a small news sheet entitled _Piccolo Bolletino_.

“Italy! You are right, Childermass.”

Childermass looks up from his sewing, then unfolds his legs and stands.

“She is in Italy. Do come and see.”

They bend close together over the bowl, and look in at her. After a moment or two, she turns a page and gives a little cough.

“She has learnt Italian,” Jonathan says, and laughs, hardly believing.

“It seems a sensible thing to do. She is a sensible lady.”

“She is, Childermass.” Jonathan laughs again, and claps a cupped hand to his shoulder. “Indeed she is!”

And so they are still, in their shirtsleeves and bending together over a brass bowl, when Balfour enters, clears his throat and announces that Mr Gatcombe and Mr Tantony await their guests in the green sitting-room.

Over a dinner of what seems more like four or five courses than three - for Gatcombe insists that their guests must sample cook’s chestnut soup in addition to the potted shrimp, and there is a very little partridge, roasted with fennel, that really must be tried before the beef - the business is finally brought out.

There is to be a soirée the following evening, and likely the one after, for a select number of Gatcombe and Tantony’s most intimate friends, and as many Newark and Grantham brewers as can be fitted into the blue salon. It is Mr Tantony’s dearest wish, Gatcombe explains, that he may learn some magic to show to the brewers, for nothing may increase a man’s reputation in these days as a little trick or two, and if word were to escape of it, it might be of distinct benefit to the name of Gatcombe and Tantony, not to mention how it must put their rivals in a rage.

Jonathan is astonished. “But would it surely not be of more benefit to the name of Gatcombe and Tantony if I were to speed up the fermentation of your ale, or increase the yield of your barley man by whatever means I may, in consideration of which he might offer you some favourable rate?”

“To gain an unfair advantage in our work? It is something I have not thought of! Mr Tantony, have you thought of it?” Tantony shakes his head. “And yet, in his _Wealth of Nations_ , Mr Smith does require us to look to the smaller - _personal_ \- economy in order to benefit the larger, does he not?” They look at each other for several moments, and though no speech passes between them, Gatcombe looks up at length, a broad smile unfurled across his face. “We are agreed. During the days we shall work to find some little ways of improving our manufactory, and during the evenings, we will baffle the Grantham brewers with our feats of magic!”

They agree to drink to it over an elaborate jelly with marzipan fruits. Gatcombe snaps his fingers and a decanter of an unknown malted liquor is brought forth. This, he explains, is made from the finest of their barley store, and among their cellar is reserved only for the most significant guests.

It is remarkably strong. And after two glasses of it, Jonathan is prevailed upon to move some of the parlour furniture around by magic, and then to render the parlour wall quite transparent, so that the company are able to see into the dining room where two of the maids are leaning upon a console table and whispering together. Tantony, despite the dilatory conduct of his domestic staff, is visibly moved. His eyes dart about, and he sighs extremely, and Gatcombe proclaims him quite overjoyed with it. A deal more of the malt liquor is consumed, more petty magic performed, and it is quite half-past one o’clock by the time Jonathan and Childermass retire to bed, making an unsteady progress up the staircase, anxiously attended by Balfour, and half leaning upon each other because, as Jonathan remarks, the stairs are certainly sliding one way and the other beneath their feet.

They collide in the doorway to the bedchamber, and Childermass stumbles forward, pitching face-down upon the bedspread, while Jonathan clutches the doorframe with both hands, swaying a little.

“If you will permit,” Balfour begins in a clipped murmur, “and in the absence of your own gentlemen, I will take care of your clothing, and make sure your accommodations are comfortable.”

“By all means, Balfour!” Jonathan exclaims, removing one hand from the doorframe and waving it rather wildly into the room.

Balfour undresses him with a gentle efficiency, and as little disturbance as possible, despite Jonathan’s continuing propensity to sway. By the time Balfour is easing his shirt up over his chest, Childermass has righted himself upon the bed, though his legs are off it and his feet at unusual angles on the floor, and he appears to watch the procedure with dark glassy eyes. Balfour collects Jonathan’s shirt and neckcloth and lays them over the back of the cushioned chair.

“Sir?” he says to Childermass, who starts at being so addressed.

“No. No, I thank you. I can take off my own clothes.”

And so he does, briefly and with some violence, his stockings at first and then his neckcloth and shirt, directing a fixed stare at the Persian carpet upon the floor by the bed, and tipping uneasily to one side. His belly and chest are slim and pale, with sparse dark hair, and there is a raised red scar upon his left shoulder. Jonathan squints at it. He had heard of the incident, of course, and knew that though it was put about as a French spy, it was no such matter. He thinks, albeit with some difficulty, that Childermass should not seem a vulnerable man, and it is a thing entirely wrong to look at him like this. Nevertheless he looks, feeling remarkably slow and stupid.

Balfour folds Childermass’s shirt, too, and fetches new linen from the press. He is about to withdraw when Childermass stirs and calls out, “Wait. Take this.” He scrabbles on the floor for his cane, and holds it out to Balfour. “I need it - it needs - polishing.”

“Of course, sir.” Balfour bows low, and with a bundle of clothing in one arm and the raven-topped cane in the other, he departs with a quiet good night.

Childermass hauls himself to the top of the bed and gets amongst the sheets, naked to the waist though still breeched, watching Jonathan through lowered eyelids. When he is tucked in place, his eyes fall shut, and he lies still. Jonathan, feeling a good deal soberer than he had some minutes before, sits for a while in the overstuffed chair, then reaches for a new shirt, removes his breeches and climbs under the blankets on the other side. It is a bed larger by some considerable degree than the one they shared the previous night, and he may move his limbs about this way and that with no risk of intertwining himself with Childermass, yet he does not. Candlelight flickers over them, and when Jonathan looks to his side, Childermass is turned towards him, shadows stretching and flinching across his face, his pale forehead and delicate eyelids, the shadow of beard on his jaw and his hair spread upon the bolster. Jonathan pinches out the candle, and lies straight in the bed, his hands gripping each other loosely at his middle.

At length Jonathan sleeps, and this time does not awake until light floods into the room, and he blinks his way to consciousness to find his head pounding most fearfully and his mouth and nose pressed into the soft tobacco-scented disarray of Childermass’s hair. Childermass is turned away from him now, and snoring peaceably. Jonathan wishes for just a portion of his luck.

He shifts onto his back and lays his forearm across his brow. A small maid is leaving a pile of ironed linen upon the dressing-table. “Thank you,” he says, as the maid bobs and makes her exit.

The voice of Jonathan’s conscience urges most strongly that he should rise and dress, but stronger still is the impulse to lie still, to gentle the cacophony in his head, and to take comfort from the soft mattress and the warm companion lying next to him. It is an odd fancy, but it is also a good deal of time since Jonathan has been able to enjoy the comfort offered by a shared bed; it is a luxury sanctioned by the house itself, and it cannot hurt Childermass, who is still sound asleep.

Some ten minutes later Childermass at last begins to stir, and Jonathan, who finds that even through his light doze he has been expecting it every minute, all but leaps up from the bed and hastens to dress. As he straightens his shirt and turns to look at the bed, Childermass is opening his eyes.

“I believe at one point last night,” Jonathan says lightly, “I may have extracted a promise of eggs this morning. Although, I must admit to being somewhat hazy on many points.”

“Yes.” Childermass smiles a little, blinking in the bright light from the windows. “You did that.”

Jonathan leaves the room so that Childermass can dress in privacy. Outside the door is propped the knotted cane his friend so urgently required to be taken away for polishing last night. This indeed has been done, and assiduously, for the raven on top of it now gleams with a strange dark brightness. Jonathan takes it up, and wonders again at the magic that shivers through the hand that has hold of it, then proceeds down the staircase to breakfast, carrying it with him.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i had anticipated getting them as far as france in this part, which as you can see has not happened(!); although the overall narrative shape has not changed, some things have expanded a bit in the writing. it will therefore be more than 3 parts when completed - perhaps more like 6 at this length.
> 
> thanks and love to [berry](http://archiveofourown.org/users/berry/pseuds/berry), who is the best audience ever.


	3. Chapter 3

Breakfast is a quantity of dried sausage, a little plate of anchovies, and a squat loaf of rye bread set about with little bowls of preserves and seven or eight sorts of cheese, and two large gilded pots, the one containing warmed chocolate, the other cooked milk. And oh, there are eggs! A dozen of them at least, globed and glossy and pale as cream upon a dished silver platter. Jonathan regards the meal with considerable satisfaction, before plucking an egg from the platter and slipping it whole into his mouth.

It is while this egg sits roundly upon his tongue, pushing the soft part of his cheeks outward in a most ridiculous fashion, that Gatcombe enters the morning-room, dressed in an exquisite burgundy cotton banyan with sapphire and bronze vines picked out in a lustrous thread.

“Now then, Mr Strange,” he starts in, without preamble. “Mr Tantony wishes to know the exact method for accomplishing your trick of moving the card table. Will you take coffee this morning?”

Jonathan chews with some alacrity. “I -” he swallows a portion of the egg, “I am most happy to explain the procedure to Mr Tantony. I cannot guarantee that it will serve, however, if he cannot command the magic.” Jonathan picks up a plate, feeling quite in command and ready to expound upon the disciplines of a familiar magic to an eager listener. “While a rather simple spell in composition, it nevertheless requires a wholesale movement of particles, you see, and the cooperation of a number of elements -”

“Yes I am quite sure it is confoundedly difficult to teach, but for a magician of your gifts...” Jonathan inclines his head in acknowledgement of the compliment. “Chilton, please bring some coffee.” As the servant is despatched, Gatcombe’s eye is caught by the cane resting against the breakfast table.

“What a handsome object!”

Jonathan swallows the rest of the egg before he is quite ready, and feels it nudge its slow way down his throat and through his chest, coughing a little. “It belongs to Childermass.”

“Well. He certainly has a most refined taste. And is it magical?”

“I believe it to be extremely magical, although I have yet to divine quite how it may be employed. Childermass, you will be astonished to hear, seems quite indifferent to it on the whole, and is forever trying to get rid of it!” Jonathan proffers a smile of the greatest bemusement, largely for Gatcombe’s benefit, and places three further boiled eggs onto his plate, along with a quantity of hard white cheese.

“Indeed indeed!” They exchange a look. “That is most strange. I am sure we would be quite delighted to purchase it from him ourselves and keep it here with us, if he seeks a buyer for it.”

There is something in Gatcombe’s avidity for any little magical thing that Jonathan finds himself begin to dislike. It makes him a little abrupt. “No. I think it altogether a bad idea, and I certainly will not allow Childermass to part with his possessions for any purpose of my own.”

“But he will be most happy to please you, I am sure -”

“No, I am afraid the subject is quite closed. I am happy to oblige you in all other ways but this, Mr Gatcombe.” Jonathan settles himself at the table, balancing the cane against the table edge at his side, as Chilton returns with a large jug of coffee.

“Well. It is quite understood.” His tone plainly states that it is no such thing, but Jonathan gives him a small smile in shared pretence. “Shall we therefore begin immediately after breakfast with Mr Tantony’s instruction? Ah, good morning, Mr Childermass - I did not see you there.” Jonathan looks up sharply to see Childermass leaning in the doorway to the morning room, looking not at Gatcombe, but at himself and with a markedly severe expression, and he feels himself colour a little. “Well, come in, come in. Do have some toasted bread and butter and any thing you would like.”

“Thank you, sir.” He nods then at Gatcombe with every appearance of politeness, but rouses himself slowly to come into the room.

“Now, there is coffee, if you take it?” Gatcombe gestures at the jug on the table, and Childermass nods again. “I will go and stir up Mr Tantony.”

“You should’ve let them have it,” Childermass says when Gatcombe has departed.

“Childermass, I believe we have discussed the matter. This undertaking is mine, and I am more grateful than I can say that you have consented to be my companion in it. I will not suffer you to part with your valued belongings on any account.”

“As you rightly point out, Mr Strange, it does not belong to you. I may dispose of it as I wish.” He has come now to stand before the breakfast table, though he shows no inclination to avail himself of its contents.

“Then you should dispose of it to _me_ , not to such as Tantony and Gatcombe, who have not the least idea of its use. If you dislike the thing so much, give it to me. I should value it extremely, and consider it an honour.”

Childermass opens his mouth, but it is a moment before he says, “No.”

“I should ensure that it remains -”

“No.”

“But this is peevish. Why in the world -?”

“I have no wish discuss it.”

“Oh very well. But then you must keep it and bear the burden yourself. If you insist on giving it away, I shall simply purchase it back with the income from our brewers, and then where shall we be? Forever in Nottinghamshire, I dare say.”

Childermass grunts, and finally comes to the table to pour for himself a coffee. “You are impossible.”

“Very well. I am impossible. And you are remarkably ill-tempered this morning. How did you come by the thing anyway, that you are so eager to see it gone?”

“Mrs Lennox had it of a great-uncle. It came from from a large birch wood planted by an ancestor near Fountains Abbey. When the wood was cleared for pasture in the last century the great-uncle had this stick made from it. She gave it to Mr Segundus, and I had it of him.”

Jonathan, who is about to insert a large portion of toast into his mouth, pauses, and wonders if the butter looks a little sour. “A generous gift indeed!” he says, with little good humour. “Segundus must have thought a great deal -”

“It was not a gift. I asked him for it. I thought I had a need of it, but it did not work precisely as I had thought it might, and now that need has passed, as I told you.”

Jonathan is pricked by the distinct desire to know more about how precisely the birch cane _did_ work, not to mention the need that has apparently now passed, but everything in the dour manner in which Childermass drinks his coffee tells him he might not with any safety pursue the conversation. Instead he strokes a thumb over the dark gleam of the raven, feeling magic strike out like an agitated heartbeat.

The short series of incantations required to levitate the card table prove quite beyond Tantony’s powers, as any fool may have predicted, and after a half hour of frustrated effort - principally Jonathan’s - and Gatcombe piping up with all manner of astonishingly stupid suggestions, they are forced to admit defeat. Their hosts seem little discouraged, however, with the prospect of the illustrious and notorious Jonathan Strange to amuse their company. It works on Jonathan’s mood in a most depressing way.

“Idiocy!” he says, when he and Childermass are left alone. “No one has the smallest understanding of what can be achieved with magic - of the scale and beauty of it - of the things I have seen. With them it is all lifting up tables and vanishing watches!”

“Be calm, sir.”

“I knew how it would be here.” 

“And yet this was your idea.”

Jonathan has nothing to say to that. He reflects only on the strictures that surround him, and they are most keenly felt: that he is poor and suspected, that he may not yet be open, may not speak to magicians, may not seek out the great mysteries that were once his principal occupation. “It is intolerable,” he concludes. “There is great business to be done and here we are becalmed in the middle of England amongst brewers, and engaged in parlour tricks.” 

“If you feel it so unworthy of you, perhaps you will let me perform the spells, sir. I have no such objection, and the company will likely be as impressed by Mr Strange’s pupil as by Mr Strange himself. More so, maybe, if they think you too important to show them a trick.” His tone is dry as dust, and Jonathan is not so insensitive as to miss the criticism. “You may just shake a few men’s hands and concentrate on the larger spells for the improvement of the business.”

Jonathan looks at him. His arms are folded and his expression is ironic and a perhaps a little deprecating, but the offer appears sincere, and Jonathan is overtaken with the sudden and powerful wish to see Childermass levitate the parlour furniture.

In the afternoon, Childermass goes out of the house upon some business, and Jonathan, himself in a humour to be busy, reminds Gatcombe of the agreement of last night, proposing that they make an outing of their own to the brewery. Mr Gatcombe is vastly pleased to display every vat and mash tun in the place, and one or two efficiencies suggest themselves immediately: a redirection of the Trent, creating a tiny tributary so that water may reach the steeping tanks directly, and a small spell of clarification and protection to remove cholera and other enteric diseases from the river water without need for boiling at source, and saving thus a great expenditure of coal. Jonathan is beginning to conceive of a gigantic bottling engine to be operated entirely by magic and situated in the great brick tower at the south end of the brewery, when Mr Gatcombe insists that they should return to Middle-gate to prepare for the evening’s party, and that furthermore the weather is threatening to turn unfavourable.

They walk back to Middle-gate through the busiest part of town. It is indeed damp, though not yet raining, and the air is so pregnant and dank with yeast and hops that it seems to hang on the walls of the buildings and mist upwards from the pavements. The good people of Newark go about their business nonetheless, and a good number of them greet Gatcombe as they pass by, looking with unconcealed interest at his companion. Gatcombe forbears to perform introductions - as he says, “It will serve to make them quite avid for the evening’s party.”

As they are turning from the Wharf onto Bar-gate and Gatcombe is tipping his hat to a gentleman in a greatcoat adorned with no less than four capes, Jonathan spots Childermass entering a haberdasher’s shop. It is at once a happy surprise and a peculiar incongruity, and Jonathan’s first impulse is to follow after and speak to him, but at that moment Gatcombe draws him forward with an arm through his own, and points out a large and unremarkable civic building, whereupon the opportunity and impulse is lost.

The heavens have indeed begun to deliver their promise of rain by the time they return, and Balfour is solicitous to remove their wet outer clothes to the kitchen to be dried immediately. Jonathan feels a little dispirited, but the fire is lit in the bedroom at Middle-gate, and all is warm and comfortable, and after a short ablution and the application of dry clothes, the temptation to lie upon the bed and close his eyes is too great to resist. He has no intention of sleep, but sleep comes in spite of any will of his, a vague drifting and then the sudden fall into deep slumber.

In the deepest part of his sleep, when all is quiet and dark, a peculiar breathlessness takes hold, and a voice calls out to him, “Mr Strange!”, then a little louder and rougher, “Sir!”

He wakes with a start, and in a deep confusion of spirits. Candles are lit, though it is a darkness born only of the foulness of the day, and leaning over him is Childermass, his hat and coat taken off, but his face and underclothes still damp with rain. It threatens to drip onto Jonathan from the loose ends of hair that hang about Childermass’s face.

“I -” Jonathan’s voice is thick with sleep. “I do apologise. I must have dozed off.”

“So you must.” 

“Have I been long asleep?”

“That depends when you lay down.” Childermass straightens at last, and pulls off his gloves. “I am just now returned.”

“Yes - I believe I saw you in the town. What have you been about in this repulsive weather?”

“I made a visit to the shirtmaker on Church-street. He took a note of credit I had made up from Mr Gatcombe, and is to begin upon some new linens for you.”

Jonathan watches as Childermass sits at the writing table, drawing paper and inkpot towards him. The room is warm, the fire still lively in the grate, and Jonathan is aware of a deep ease, a complete absence of any further desire to be about business. It is no great effort of imagination to suppose that Childermass, shoulders tensed as he begins yet another letter, has never felt such profound lassitude.

“Who are you writing to now?”

“I am writing to get us a passage for France. There is a new steam packet service from Dover. I’ve heard it is quick and clean and can be got for a sum within our means.”

“You really do think of everything, Childermass. I must confess I did not entirely understand your position with Norrell, but I do begin to see perfectly well why he could not get on without you.”

Childermass’s pen stops. “I was in service to Mr Norrell for twenty-seven years, sir. I know how to do a job correctly.”

Jonathan props himself upon his elbows, alarmed that an insult has perhaps been felt where none was intended. “Of course. I meant nothing by it at all. Only that you will make me just as dependent upon you as Norrell was.” He hopes to suggest a great joke, but Childermass’s mood is become imperturbably serious, and the expression upon his face when he turns to face Jonathan is closed and frowning.

“I am not your servant, Mr Strange.”

Jonathan sits up, and the heat from the fire, gentle whilst he lay down, seems suddenly to fling itself into his face. “I know. We would not be here otherwise.”

Something crosses Childermass’s face, a flicker of surprise, or a trick of the firelight. It is hard to judge.

“I suppose I mean that you should not behave as if you _were_ my servant. You are a magician, as I am - and we are friends.”

Childermass blinks at him, then nods slowly, and turns back to his letter. “You will have many friends again, when all is right.” His pen whispers against the paper, and the dark length of his back prevents Jonathan perceiving any emotive force in either action or words.

He persists a little, unable to still his curiosity, “Why _did_ you leave Norrell?”

Childermass does not pause this time in his writing. “Because you needed his help, sir. And he would not bloody bend when bending was needed.”

Nothing is said for a while, then Childermass folds up his letter and before he can turn back into the room Jonathan stands up from the bed and makes to straighten his clothes.

“I must speak to Gatcombe about the spells this evening.”

“It is done. He was quite anxious to tell me all you accomplished at the brewery, and I took the opportunity to tell him you needed to rest your considerable powers if you are to begin upon the great bottling engine tomorrow. He did not quite want to give way at first, but I showed him that my own magic would serve.”

“Excellent.” Jonathan pulls on his coat, laughing. “I’m certain it will serve beautifully.” He turns, meaning to ask Childermass what he showed to Gatcombe, but Childermass is beginning to lay out his cards in a careful row, and for once Jonathan is able to congratulate himself upon his own discretion in leaving him in peace.

If Jonathan had hoped for an opportunity to enlarge upon his own reputation and great deeds before a receptive audience that evening, he finds himself quite disappointed. Obliged to speak to a quantity of brewers he had not before known existed in the whole country, let alone the little town of Newark-upon-Trent, he quite forgets a time when he did not know every little thing that is to be known about the best methods of malting and the ideal form of a copper to be used for boiling the wort and hops - and there are so very many methods and such an abundance of coppers. The press of people is just such as he had pictured, however, and it requires a great many glasses of Gatcombe and Tantony’s, and a mental account of the ends to which he and Childermass will put their anticipated income, to continue smiling and nodding in the imbecilic fashion that appears to be expected.

At certain points, his gaze finds Childermass, who spends the party quite at his ease, variously in doorways or alcoves, standing apart from the company as much as can be manage and not partaking of the refreshment so assiduously supplied and re-supplied, and Jonathan feels no small amount of jealousy.

Some time into the evening, as Jonathan is listening to a long account of the benefits attaching to the new brewery architecture emerging out of Bristol, there is the sound of a tapped glass, and a cleared throat. 

“Gentlemen. Ladies,” Gatcombe begins. The crowd of guests seems to part a little, as if of a single will, and Jonathan sees their two hosts, standing side by side, matching proud smiles on both their faces. “We have promised you great wonders. Our dear friend, the English magician Mr Jonathan Strange, and his companion Mr John Childermass, have graciously consented to share with us some small taste of their miraculous powers.” A hum of talk flutters over the room, and Gatcombe’s smile grows broader. “Mr Childermass, if you please.”

Jonathan cannot at that moment see Childermass, but in an instant he feels a swell of magic such as he has not felt before in any society drawing-room. It buffets into him like a tide, jolting through his belly and into every part of his body, so that he almost stumbles backward. There is a rushing in his ears as though all but his own agitated breath is drowned out. Then it stops, and the parlour is filled with the rich dark smell of ancient rain-soaked English woodland.

A gasp comes from the front of the room just a moment later, and there is a great jostling about. Something is growing from nothing, Jonathan can feel it most surely, though he cannot yet gather himself to look up and see it; it produces a singular sensation deep in the spaces of his body, like a piece of knotted twine pulling insistently at its tether but not quite coming free. It tugs through every blood vessel, bringing heat racing to the surface of his skin and producing a stiffening of his prick within his breeches.

“It is growing a branch!” cries a woman’s voice. Jonathan endeavours to make his way to the front of the room. The other occupants of the room move around him like a river about a slow-moving boat, opening reluctantly before and closing swiftly behind, and as he edges forward the tug grows more insistent, and the heat below his skin gives rise to a bloom of sweat at the wrists and scalp. 

At length he can see Childermass, standing a little apart from Gatcombe and Tantony. His whole body is held tense in some concentrated effort, his palm raised and open. His eyes are tight shut, but all his blind focus is on the small vase-backed corner chair nestled by the card table, in the lee of the candlelight. From one of its turned rail arms, a little twisted oak branch is growing, twining about itself and curving over the back of the chair like an arch over a throne; clusters of leaves spring out of it at intervals and stretch like cats’ paws, and within the furthest sits a single perfect acorn. It is a startling and beautiful piece of natural magic, nothing in it of war and madness but only growth and succour, and as English as any soul within the room.

Jonathan is filled with a bursting sort of joy, an urge to laugh wildly. A small applause breaks out among the closest of the guests and spreads throughout the room, and then Childermass opens his eyes with a look of astonishment, swiftly quelled, and lowers his hand. The heavy woodland smell lifts a little, though the heat in Jonathan’s blood remains.

“Bravo, Mr Childermass,” Gatcombe is saying, and for all the excited murmuring, Jonathan can tell that not a single person within the room excepting himself has felt or understood even a half of the power Childermass has exhibited, and they express themselves satisfied where he is not.

“A magnificent display!” Jonathan turns to see Gatcombe and Tantony standing just behind him, evidently keen to press upon him their gratitude, for whatever it is they perceive his part to have been. “Quite heart-stopping,” Gatcombe continues, while Mr Tantony, to his other side, presses a hand to his chest and draws a theatrical breath. “You must be very proud.”

“I - yes. Quite, quite proud.”

“Something of a marvel, your Mr Childermass.”

“Indeed.” Jonathan can feel the heat in his face from the pulse of magic within the room, combined with an acute sense of not entirely possessing himself, of being stripped of a defence he has come to rely on. “Indeed he is.”

The rest of the evening passes in considerably less talk of malting and fermentation and considerably more of magic. The hosts accept congratulations from all sides, and ladies take it in turns to sit in Childermass’s chair, one arm resting upon the sprouted rail and their eyes on the bower above. Childermass is not left alone from one moment to the next, and in the instances in which Jonathan catches sight of him, he appears uncharacteristically slow, his expression weary and unguarded. Jonathan is used to such conversation, but he perceived the marked discomfort of it to one such as Childermass, who prefers to watch, and to speak only when needed and with some thought and preparation, and amid all his excitement at the magic done, he feels some remorse at having put upon Childermass the need to do it at all.

“And he learnt this of you?” a woman is saying to him, and though nothing could be further apart from the truth of it, Jonathan accedes.

The truth he discovers for himself, when the guests finally depart, and he and Childermass may withdraw to bed. Childermass pulls his feet slowly up after him as they climb the stairs and then stands in the middle of the Persian carpet as Jonathan paces.

“But how was it done? You did not learn that from one of Norrell’s books! At least no book that I saw.”

Childermass appears as close to slumber as one may get when one is still on his feet and fully dressed. “No. Not a book. When I was shot, and then after, when the mirrors broke and magic came back, the trees spoke to me.” Jonathan sits down in the chair at their writing desk; Childermass does not, but perhaps only because he cannot stir himself to find a chair. “I think they had spoken to me all my life, the sky and earth too, but it was then I first could hear them. Do you understand?”

“Yes,” Jonathan says, and his delight is plain in his voice. “Yes, I understand perfectly.”

“I made a study of it - to learn to speak back. That chair - and that one -” he points at the little ladder back chair upon which Jonathan sits - “they remember. The oak remembers the place where it grew, remembers its family. I ask it and it tells me.”

“As simple as that!”

“Ask a thing the right question, and most times it will answer.”

It is an astounding idea, and yet the very simplest imaginable, that the elements need not be held under force of will, nor even allied to the side of a magician, but conversed with, understood. That it is an idea that has come from Childermass should be the least astounding thing about it, but somehow it binds itself up with all the other things Childermass may choose to allow a person to know about him - his practicalities and strengths, his occasional unsuspected gentlenesses - and engenders something a little revelatory. He has sat finally upon the bed, and regards his hands where they hang between his knees, and watching him, Jonathan perceives an unanticipated expansion of feeling within himself, of respect, but also of a curious fondness, which perhaps is the quieter echo of his earlier excitement.

“Perhaps things always answer you, Childermass. Others of us must work considerably harder at it.”

Childermass looks up at him, blinks slowly, and says nothing. Then he yawns.

There is a knocking at the door.

“Come!”

The servant enters with a low bow.

“Ah, Balfour, there you are. I am going to sit up a little longer, I thank you. Perhaps you would attend to Mr Childermass?”

He harbours some expectation that Childermass will demur, but in the event he does not. Instead he allows Balfour to dart efficiently around him, removing coat, waistcoat, neckcloth, folding and hanging. The light from the candle at the bedside outlines Childermass’s slim figure through his shirt, and Jonathan recalls the scar at his shoulder, a sacrifice worthily made in the end for such a gift given. As Balfour makes to remove Childermass’s breeches, Jonathan catches his eye, and is aware on a sudden of staring in what might be considered a quite ungentlemanly fashion.

He stands, takes the water jug from the wash stand, and pours a quantity of it into the brass bowl as a form of occupation at the least, and by the time he has crossed it and the vision begins to appear, Childermass is in bed. Jonathan glances at him, and in the candlelight cannot see quite well enough to judge if his eyes are open or not, but the warm glow darting upon his face makes it seem as if his eyelids flutter a little.

Jonathan leans upon his hands and looks at the vision in the bowl. It is late and he cannot have expected to see any great business afoot, and indeed it is not. Arabella dozes upon a sopha in a darkened room, her head turned to the side; a book is spread open upon her skirts. As Jonathan watches, a hand takes the book from her lap - Mary, it must be, though he cannot distinguish the hand’s owner in the darkness - and Arabella, upon whom the magic is focused, turns her head, murmuring something that cannot be made out, and smiles. The hand returns and smoothes over her shoulder. It is a vision of such contentment that something composed a little of regret and a little of relief settles upon Jonathan.

“Well, Childermass, at all events -” he begins, turning back towards the bed, but he does not continue, for Childermass is asleep in truth.

~

At breakfast the next morning, two letters are brought in, both addressed to Childermass. The first he reads, frowning, and when Jonathan enquires as to the contents, he merely passes it across the table. 

“You can read it for yourself.”

Starecross School, Lancashire  
John Segundus to Mr John Childermass, May 21st, 1818.

My dear Sir,  
I am pleased to report that Mr Haskett arrived as you promised with the box shortly after your departure from Starecross. I was at the time employed in calming the spirits of Mrs Caddy - upon whom Vinculus had made a most disagreeable impression by entering at once into the pantry when I left him alone and unwrapping and beginning to consume a large new wheel of cheese - and was not able to inspect its condition at first, but it appears to have made the journey quite without any defect. It is now housed in the room which you yourself have had cause to use when on occasion you have visited us here at Starecross.

In the afternoon, however, something happened that was entirely unlooked for. I found myself with a number of matters in hand - one of our younger boys was caught out reading Ozymandias behind his copy of Absalom, following which a large cache of the new poets was discovered, and I was obliged to speak to the school as a whole on the rewards of diligent and relevant study. When thereafter I returned to your room to inspect the box more closely, I found the travelling cloth, which I had placed into it temporarily, thrown carelessly upon the floor, and on lifting the lid, discovered Vinculus in its place sound asleep. I could not have been more surprised, and I must tell you, Childermass, that my cry alone was sufficient to wake him from what appeared to be a rather sated sleep.

On waking, he shouted out a thing which I did not quite understand. I believe it was “the first shall return” or some other similar phrasing, and when I questioned him, he refused to explain himself but held onto my neckcloth and looked me quite rudely in the eye, repeated it, and said that it was written. I can only conclude that he believes it to be some matter contained within the writing upon his person, although how he can conceivably have found this out is entirely beyond me. What do you think, Childermass?

There followed a most peculiar exchange between us, in which he desired to know if I myself would lie in the box, and when I said that I most certainly would under no circumstances consider doing any such thing, he gave me to understand that if I intended to be a reader, I must learn to listen, and that only those who listen will begin to learn. What can he have meant by it? He then went out of the house and has not been seen since, much to Mrs Caddy’s pleasure, I must say. It is now near dinner-time, and though I must for scholarship’s sake hope that he returns soon, I confess I do not much look forward to it.

As for the reading, this afternoon I have studied again our papers on the symbols, and begun to compare those which, though not identical, do have many features in common, such as the repeated diacritics we observed. I wonder if there is a type of rudimentary grammar at work here. When Vinculus returns I will attempt a new examination of the original. There is much work to be done, and I will be sure to write again with any further discoveries.  
I must close now, as there is quite a commotion on the front path, which I suspect requires my attention. Please undertake to pass my sincerest regards to Mr Strange, together with my greatest good wishes for all the things you have planned.

Your respectful friend,  
JS

Jonathan gives the letter back to Childermass. “Vinculus proves himself as much the charming house guest as ever he was, I see.”

Childermass grunts in response. “They will do well enough together, I think,” he says, though his attention is all upon the second letter, which seems to contain much that interests. When at length he folds it and puts it away, Jonathan finds his curiosity must be answered.

He points his butter knife at the pocket containing the letter. “Well? What is it?”

“Your book, sir.” Childermass takes a mouthful of coffee. “Gatekeeper of Apollo. It is by a man called Nicholas Goubert, and it is in the Ambrosian Library in Milan.”

“Is it indeed? Goubert? Goubert? No, I have never heard that name before. At least I must have, but I have not the least memory of it.”

“They have a late Argentine copy, in good condition, and will give it us for a fortnight.”

“Well.” Jonathan spreads a quite celebratory amount of butter onto his bread. “This is a great success, is it not? Just as your cards foretold!” Childermass stares at him as if he has not quite understood. “The Knight of Cups, was it not?”

“No,” he says quickly, and for an instant he looks as though he has suffered a small sort of shock, then his eyebrows descend, and he turns his head slowly from Jonathan to look out of the window. “The three of coins.”

“Ah well, I make no claim to cartomancy. There I am in your hands, Childermass. In any case this is news of the best kind. One more day to pass amongst the brewers, then we shall make for Dover, and as soon as we are disembarked in France, we may begin the journey to Milan. It is quite in our way to Venice.”

By way of answer, Childermass unfolds his legs and stands, then leaves Jonathan to his breakfast without a word. Alone in the morning room, and chewing upon his bread and butter, Jonathan reflects that after all, he is quite right. There is much business to be accomplished, and every reason to be briskly about it.

Animating a bottling engine is no brisk business, however, and there is another soiree to be got through, where Jonathan cheerfully takes his turn providing the magical diversions, then another night of magical enervation in which sleep is slow to arrive, and fitful when it comes, full of half-waking dreams of quite transparent meaning, where Jonathan is caught in twisting branches that grow out of nothing, pin his body like a strait waistcoat, and set his heart racing.

When he wakes for the final time and it is full morning, Childermass is gone. Jonathan dresses with some feeling of urgency, and takes a hasty breakfast of boiled eggs and smoked fish. In the forenoon, he is prevailed upon to spend some time in the library with Mr Tantony, and is surprised to discover, on closer inspection, one or two volumes of magical scholarship that he is able quite sincerely to recommend. Most miraculous of all, after an hour and a half of anxious concentration, Mr Tantony is able to light a small taper using a simple spell of combustion, a success engendering such excitement that Jonathan is subjected to a strong and heartfelt embrace. A little silver bell summons both Gatcombe and Balfour in great haste, whereupon the excitement becomes general and Chilton, several maids and the cook are brought into the library to witness the great miracle of magic their master is now able to command. One maid has to sit down upon an overstuffed chair, brought in fact to tears, although for different reasons.

“Oh! And now I shall not need to light the candles for the masters, and I shall be cast out into the street.”

Some careful words are required to settle her fears, and Gatcombe ends by assuring her that Mr Tantony’s powers will never be used for practical purposes, but only to show to important company, while Balfour produces a succession of handkerchiefs from somewhere about his immaculate person. When she is calmed, Gatcombe turns to Jonathan.

“Mr Strange!” he pronounces in a loud voice that yet wavers most fearfully. “My _dear_ Mr Strange, we cannot thank you enough! It is beyond anything we hoped.” He takes Jonathan’s hand in a forceful grip and presses it until the bones rub painfully together beneath the skin.

Jonathan is quite worn out with praise and has been clutched by a half dozen people of all sorts, by the time Childermass returns to the house at a quarter past twelve. He is accompanied by a shop boy carrying an armful of packets in which is enclosed a great quantity of new linen. The parcels are taken upstairs to be opened, and the garments within are found to be altogether finely stitched and starched.

“You must have half of it for yourself,” Jonathan says, as Childermass instructs Balfour on the packing of their possessions. Their store of luggage has been greatly increased, not only by their own purchases, but also by a number of small gifts from their hosts of soft woollen blankets and fine stockings.

“They were made for you. I have very little use for good clothes.”

“Nevertheless. We are of a size, are we not? I myself have been wearing your clothes for some days.”

Childermass looks at him, and smiles oddly. “You have. A fine sight you look, too.”

“I dare say. And so I insist.”

“Very well, then.” The smile grows, and Jonathan finds himself returning it, warmed by a sudden enthusiasm to be travelling again, to be jostling along the roads towards London and the coast with Childermass at his side.

The leave-taking is long, however, and it is late in the afternoon before Jonathan and Childermass are leaving Newark. Their hosts have given them the use of their own carriage and postilions for the first day of their journey, and Balfour has wrapped them a quantity of bread and fruit, and so they make good time, and cheerfully spent, and reach as far as Peterborough before they must stop for the men’s sake and take rooms at an inn.

For the three nights of the journey to Dover they eat well, as their new financial situation permits, and sleep once more apart. It seems a luxury at first to close the door behind one’s self, to spread one’s limbs beneath a soft blanket without fear of touching where one is not welcomed, but Jonathan finds himself awake long into the night, watching the candle at his bedside burn down. When sleep comes, it brings with it the dream of the branches once more, and on the third night Jonathan wakes from the dream in a rush, panting into the bolster, that tugging knotted feeling deep in his belly and a cockstand pressing against the mattress. In the glimmer of early dawn, Jonathan recalls the swell of that magic about him in the drawing-room at Newark; the blood pulses beneath his skin just as it did then. He remembers the flicker of Childermass’s eyelids, and cannot resist the temptation of his own touch. He has not been touched for so long. His fingers curl around his prick, hesitating at first, but then it is a quick thing, and sharply felt, the remembered smell of wet woodlands filling his nose, and his own loud breath stuttering in his ears. Pleasure spools out within him, over and over, and trapped in his own erotic stupor, he thinks it like some beautiful natural magic, until he spends and the spell is broken.

At eleven o’clock on the fourth day, they finally reach the port of Dover, and Jonathan is at first surprised at the crowds clustering to watch the boats depart.The steam packet is a subject of great interest to every traveller, especially those aboard the sailing ferries, which seem ancient and lumbering by comparison. The steamer is not yet fitted out entirely for passengers, but carries the post and other small goods, and a very few travellers with the means to procure the privilege of speed. The crew rows them out to the mooring, and settles them in the stern of the craft with their trunks at their feet. As the boat gets under way, some ferry passengers wave; some laugh and point at the great round paddles flapping at the water. Jonathan waves back in high spirits.

“This is rather comfortable, all things considered, is it not Childermass?”

“It is speed we have paid for.”

“Nevertheless, I have experienced far greater inconvenience. Travels in wartime are apt to put one into a close acquaintance with every discomfort there is.”

Twenty minutes out of port and into the channel, the wind rises and the water begins to swell, five minutes more and the small boat is thrown back and forth like a fragment of driftwood. The salt spray stings against the skin and sticks Jonathan’s hair to his face, his stomach pitches upward with each movement of the deck, and his cheer has long since evaporated.

“I am only thankful - I did not take a large breakfast,” he wheezes, clutching at the rail and staring down the little distance to where the channel heaves itself against the sides of the boat. “This is quite - intolerable.”

“And I thought you were a seasoned traveller, Mr Strange.” Childermass has taken up a place beside him and seems merely to sway with the motion of the steamer, quite at his ease.

“Please, Childermass. Don’t tease me. I’d return every last - sou of that dratted money to get my feet on dry land.”

“Forgive me.” Over the noise of the crashing water, Jonathan might think Childermass is laughing, but when he turns to make the accusation, Childermass is walking away towards the front of the boat.

He returns after a few minutes with a metal cup, in which is a tisane composed of mint leaves and a little fennel.

“Where did you get this?”

“Mr Dunn, the first mate. He finds it provident to keep a store of herbs for such passengers as suffer.”

“This infernal contraption.”

Childermass persuades him to sit again amongst their trunks and drink the tea, and indeed it does have something of a settling effect.

“There now,” Childermass says, as Jonathan breathes deeply with relief, and he is suddenly reminded of the child and the thrown wheel at Pontefract. He is about to say as much, when a drop of water lands in his tea, distracting him.

A second or two later it is raining, not in a torrent but in thick gusts that smack upon the deck and into the mouth and ears, and with no shelter to be had anywhere on the boat, Jonathan and Childermass are compelled to sit in it and endure. Jonathan pulls his collar up and feels all the misery of the situation, but when he looks over at Childermass from under his hat, he sees nothing more than an expression of mild forbearance.

“Childermass, do you know I once thought you entirely immune to inclement weather? No longer. I begin to think perhaps you summon it.”

“You’re as bad as Norrell for your moaning and groaning. There - you find that funny.”

Jonathan is smiling. “I do.” In fact, far from insulted, Jonathan recognises it for the concession it is, and hears through the curtly spoken words what may pass, in Childermass at least, for a small tenderness. It seems to invite some sort of little confidence between them, which Jonathan pursues. “You miss him, I suppose. You were, as you yourself say, in his service for twenty-seven years. And a more devoted employee is not to be found anywhere.”

“I shift for myself well enough. But I worry he may be lonely.”

“Without you? I am convinced of it. I believe him to be quite safe, if that is a comfort in any degree.”

“You mistake the matter. He held me in no regard, except when he had some need of my work. I’ve never known him have a regard to any man until you arrived in Hanover Square. He will be lonely now you are gone. That is what I mean.”

“Ah. Then I am sorry for it.” Jonathan eyes the last of his tisane, which must by now be at least a third rainwater. “We will recover him, Childermass, I am certain.”

“Thank you, Mr Strange. I know you have not always been friends.”

“No, that is undoubtedly true. I must take some blame there. I hope that we shall be, however. I hope that when all is right again, we shall be good colleagues and the best of friends.”

Childermass does not look at him, but nods his head, then looks down at his feet among the luggage. Water pools in the rim of his hat.

After a few more minutes the rain slows and stops and the wind dies. The shoreline of France sprawls in a thin grey line at the horizon, and above it the clouds are breaking up and showing small fragments of blue. There was something else that Jonathan wanted to say, but now the continent is before them, and he forgets what it was.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> thank you to [berry](http://archiveofourown.org/users/berry/pseuds/berry) for some crucial beta additions!


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> a small caution for serious, but non-fatal illness.

The journey through the northern part of France is undertaken in the brightest sunshine, under pale blue skies and through fields dotted with bright opium poppies. After a scant two days, Jonathan spirits are high, and England quite forgiven for its damnable wetness.

“Your powers are weakened, I perceive, Childermass.” He peers out of the carriage window upon a most poetic stretch of meadow. “You cannot summon a single cloud in these foreign climes!”

“Perhaps I have more important matters to think of.” Childermass has picked up a news sheet in Arras, and appears unwilling to put it back down until he has read every word upon it.

“I am certain of it, although I am persuaded your life might be much pleasanter if you took the habit of thinking less and indulging more.”

Childermass merely grunts and flaps his news sheet. “But if I am not to summon rain, then how may I indulge myself?”

“Now there you have me, Childermass!”

On Monday the thirty-first of May, Jonathan Strange and John Childermass arrive in the city of Rheims. The last part has been a long stretch of road and a poorly sprung coach, but they arrive just after the mid-day, and so naturally Childermass has business to attend to the instant the door of the carriage closes behind him.

Jonathan takes himself to a coffee-house in the Cordeliers for refreshment and to enquire after lodgings, and shortly thereafter, at the recommendation of a civil if somewhat terse waiter, he is installed in a little suite of rooms in a smart lodging-house just to the south of the old university. It consists of two bed-chambers of indifferent size, and insinuated between them a sitting-room, upholstered and draped in the striking yellow of Sicilian lemons, and so narrow and slight one might imagine that a part of one of the bed-chambers had been carved out to create it. It is a comfortable sort of lodging, its only defect other than size being its rather thin walls. Indeed after one half-hour spent there alone, Jonathan is naggingly aware of the clatter of the house’s servants, and of a muffled but persistent coughing issuing from another set of rooms to the west of their own, and undertakes to arrange the furniture so that they may sit in the quietest spot.

It is thus he is employed, shifting a yellow cushioned chair and a screen painted with improbably - one might even venture imperceptibly - dressed nymphs, when Childermass arrives, under direction from the same coffee-house waiter. He has with him a letter, which he hands to Jonathan. Jonathan sits on the yellow chair to read it.

_Starecross School, Lancashire  
John Segundus to Mr John Childermass, Poste restant Reims, May 27th, 1818._

_My dear Sir,_

_I had thought to respond to your kind enquiries with some report of our progress towards the close of our first school year - I am planning a brief schedule of examinations upon some established principles of magical composition. We do of course greatly miss the schematic clarity of Sutton-Grove, but there is little to be gained lamenting what may not be recovered, and I am indebted to you for your notes upon the matter._

_As I say, I had thought to tell you largely of all this, but something has happened which will surprise you extremely and must occupy the main part of this communication. Last evening I lay down in the box. How you must be staring at this poor letter, but I am bound to tell you it is the plain truth. I had passed a most trying hour with Vinculus, which concluded with him once more leaving the house, this time, I believe, with a pocketful of silver napkin rings. I turned, as is my habit, to our old notations, but making no progress with the symbols and their correspondences, I put down the papers in some despair. Indeed I was quite ready to abandon the business entirely and to write to you of my decision, but a peculiar mood seized upon me to go and look at the box in the bedroom, and before I quite knew what I was about, I was climbing into it. The sensation I underwent upon doing so was a singular one, as if I were at one time as wide awake as I had ever been and yet under the influence of something that quite distracted my senses. When I lay upon my back and looked upwards, the house itself seemed to have dissolved away so that I looked upon the heavens and a great congregation of stars rather than the upstairs ceiling at Starecross. After passing a length of time I could not measure in distracted contemplation of the same, I slept._

_When I woke, it was as dark as an eclipse night, and it was not until my hand struck the side of the box, as I thought to lift it to my face, that I recollected my whereabouts. There were in fact little pricks of light reaching my person here and there through various knotholes in the wood, and the realisation struck me all on a sudden that someone had closed the lid. I pushed it open, in a modest degree of alarm, and sat up. It was full day still, and crouched in the corner of the room was Vinculus. He had without doubt closed the lid upon me._

_You may imagine the censure I unleashed upon him, the very many rebukes - I will forbear to repeat them here - but he was entirely unmoved. Indeed, when I had run out of words with which to berate him, he regarded me mutely for a moment or two, and merely said, “Well?”_

_“Well, what?” I responded, at a loss. Whereupon he crept towards me, opening his shirt, and when he was close enough to touch, I saw that some of the symbols upon his chest seemed to glow unnaturally. And more than that, they were no longer the impenetrable farrago of strokes and shapes that we have wrestled with, but a single repeated word, as English as any you might find in any book of the British Museum Library._

_The word was “north”, and it appeared several times upon Vinculus’s breast and lower part. When I told him this, Vinculus said a thing I have heard him say before: “the north shall break his bounds”. We had thought such utterances some nonsense of his own - it is a thing that seemed more than credible - and yet I begin to think they are perhaps true readings. Childermass, I must ask you, has he ever got into the box when it has been at your lodgings? Have you? I do wonder if there is some quality, some magical residue there that may suggest things to the willing mind._

_If it is so, then this is truly a miraculous discovery, and may lead us to further decipherings, and in time to the whole text of the King’s new Book. I must say -_

Jonathan puts down the page, and looks up at his companion.

“Do you think it true, Childermass?”

Childermass is engaged in reading a copy of _A Museum of Magics_ , a new periodical out of Manchester, which Segundus had folded and sealed into his letter. He casts the briefest of glances at Jonathan, but does not break off reading. “Aye, I do.”

“Well this is tremendous, is it not? To understand the King’s new Book - I don’t think I would exchange the whole library at Hurtfew for that. And the north. ‘The north shall break his bounds’ - what do you suppose is meant by it, Childermass?

“I couldn’t say.”

“And what of the box - if it is some property of the _box_ itself - of what wood is the box composed?”

“Of hawthorn.”

“Of hawthorn!” Jonathan stands and begins to pace a little. “And what is the saying -?”

“‘The hawthorn said he would answer any question.’”

“Just so! Well that is to the point. And you had this box of -”

“Of a merchant in Skipton.”

“Well. Well - that tells me nothing per se. Come, Childermass, you must be more forthcoming. What transpired with the box when it was in your ownership? Did you in fact lie in it yourself?”

A strange distorting ripple passes over Childermass’s face, the sort of flinch that comes as an untutored response but seeks at once to conceal itself. Jonathan, however, is undertaking a course of study to observe his friend a little better, and catches it with ease.

“You did!” The grimace becomes full blown, and Jonathan perceives that it is a subject that rather embarrasses. Indeed the notion of Childermass measuring his length out within a rather ugly Jacobean coffer is a diverting one, though he will not say so. “And what of it? Were your questions answered?”

“Not in such a manner. I saw no words on Vinculus’s chest, only blue scratchings as you do.”

“Then why now, at Starecross?”

“Is it not plain, Mr Strange? We must conclude that John Segundus is to be the Reader.”

Jonathan sits again. “Mr Segundus? Can you believe it so? He is a most amiable man, to be sure, and a magician scholar of notable enthusiasm, but can he have such a facility of his own? I never observed it or heard of it.”

“Only a week ago you saw Mr Tantony use a spell to light a taper. Did that not surprise you just as much?”

“Yes, I admit -”

“Not one day after you and Mr Norrell disappeared in your dark pillar, I came upon an accident in Stone-gate. The stage for Newcastle had struck against the barrel cart outside the Punchbowl Inn and turned it all the way about. The horses might have run mad and bolted if the tapster hadn’t used a spell to quiet them. It was not one I had heard or read of before. Last spring a new magical society was got up in Harrogate by the dale farmers, who wanted spells to scatter stormclouds. Things are different now, Mr Strange. An _enthusiasm_ is not the only thing a magician may lay claim to. Magic of all kinds is freely available for those as can grasp hold of it. It is a new way of things, and Mr Segundus may be a most _amiable_ man but he is also now a practical magician. A talented one.”

Jonathan feels himself rebuked. It is coming to be a frequent sensation, and however well deserved, it does not please him to be feeling it in the cause of John Segundus. “Well, certainly, it is just as you say. And once I am again in the company of the very many talented practical magicians as there are now in England, perhaps I shall be able to learn more of this new way of things.”

“Perhaps you shall.” He does not sound convinced of it.

“And if I prove too set in my ways, there is always John Segundus to fall back upon.” It is an astonishingly foolish thing to say, and that knowledge acts upon his anger as does a slow puncture on an inflated bladder. A louder cough filters through the wall, as if to point out his folly.

Childermass for his part looks up at Jonathan, his brows lowered to an alarming degree. “Beg your pardon, sir?”

“Forgive me, Childermass. I should not allow myself to be so carried away. I am merely a little frustrated from the journey.” Jonathan feels some heat rise to his cheeks. It is not that precisely, but what it is he has no notion of explaining even to himself. “I shall take myself out this afternoon and visit some great building or other.” Childermass’s eyes have narrowed upon him a little, so much as if he is trying to read something hidden that Jonathan turns away. “I believe the Tau Palace is recommended. And will you accompany me?”

“I have an appointment with a bookseller.”

“Of course you do.”

They go down the stairs together, however, and in the wide hall in the bottom part of the house, come across a gentleman in conversation with the landlady. The conversation is in English, and the gentleman’s clothing quite respectable, of a cut expensive enough to indicate a deal of wealth, but not so gaudy as to suggest some ignoble lack of refinement. In the manner of English gentlemen abroad, such is ample excuse for intimacy, and introductions are swiftly made. The gentleman’s name is Talbot, and he is travelling in Europe with his young wife, currently a little indisposed. The Palace is quite forgotten, and instead Jonathan and his new friend wave Childermass away to his appointment and betake themselves to a wine-shop.

They take a bottle of Madame Cliquot’s champagne wine and as it is being poured, Mr Talbot ventures the following, “I do not mean to be impertinent, by any means, but are you some poet or other? Or perhaps a politician? How is it I know your name, sir, for I am sure we have never met before now.”

“I confess I am neither. I am a magician, in fact. I was at one time quite well known, though I have been for some time in obscurity and just now returned to England. Of course, as you see, it was only a brief stay.”

“A magician indeed! Well that explains it entirely. I have a great interest in magic myself. I have read a good many books on the subject. Wait a bit - Strange! You had a great quarrel with that other fellow - what was his name?”

“Ah yes. You are speaking of Mr Norrell.”

“Norrell - exactly so! Well I never had any time for the man. Hardly a gentleman, as I understand it, and very small and apt to stay within doors. I took your part entirely.”

Jonathan laughs, a little flattered in despite of his better instincts. “I am most grateful.”

“And so are you come abroad to study foreign magics?”

“Well, not precisely. Indeed I am persuaded that magic inheres rather in its performer than its environment, and I may only command the English magic that is most natural to me. One is always in search of the new, however, is one not?”

“Oh quite! Quite. Is that not why a fellow will always come abroad? Well, don’t give up trying, old chap. Here, let us drink to it! To magic - English and otherwise.”

“To magic!”

Conversation proceeds most freely and in good part between Jonathan and Mr Talbot for the time it takes them to empty a bottle of champagne. A great part of the conversation concerns magic, in which Talbot displays a sincere interest, especially the magic of natural materials and vapours. Jonathan finds himself at one time both wanting and not wanting to relate the beautiful spell that Childermass had performed in the salon at Newark, and is a little surprised to discover that in the end he holds it to himself almost covetously, as if it is too precious to share with a person so recently met, however much in sympathy that person may be, and however much one’s tongue may be loosened with wine. He steers the conversation instead to Talbot, who, he discovers, is on his wedding tour with a little Welsh bride named Alys, who had been most eager to see the Colosseum and suchlike - and who but a brute would deny it her? Talbot sighs as he says it, and in that sigh Jonathan marks not just the wistful contentment of a new and much enamoured husband, but also some indication of sorrow, and indeed so it transpires.

“Another bottle, Strange?”

“Oh, by all means. A fine vintage.”

Two glasses into the second bottle, Talbot confesses that Mrs Talbot’s indisposition is in truth far more serious than a summer cold, and that he doubts she will ever arrive at the Colosseum. Daily she ails; it is quite a torture to look upon her pale face, and her cough is become devilishly troublesome. Jonathan comforts as best he can, stirred by an echo of the agony and bewilderment suffered with the false Mrs Strange. Two glasses further and Talbot has taken his hands in a fervent grasp and is begging him to help his wife.

“We have engaged doctors - so many that I am sick myself now at the sight of them - and none of them have done her the least good. Strange, I am at a standstill entirely. If you know of any spell that may help her, I do beg that you perform it.”

“It is rather out of the way of my accustomed magic.” Jonathan is loth to confess that the way of his accustomed magic has rather been to seek out and embrace sickness than to heal it - it suddenly seems in all ways perverse and unnatural. “But I will try what I may, my poor fellow, I do assure you.”

It is in this tableau, clasped together at the hands, that Childermass finds them, returned from his appointment with a package under his arm. The greeting is awkward, and Talbot departs soon for the house having extracted a promise of Jonathan’s attendance on young Mrs Talbot.  
“You’ve drunk too much,” Childermass says, when Jonathan relates to him the Talbots’ sadness and the proposed remedy. “You shouldn’t meddle with magic of that sort on a bellyful of wine.”

“To own the truth, Childermass, I’d scarcely any idea what to try at my most sober. It is a type of magic I’ve had little dealing with, and one hardly likes to try one’s inklings with another fellow’s wife. But I have promised my best effort.” Jonathan drains his glass.

“In that case, perhaps Mr Talbot might allow me to look at the young lady.”

“You?” Jonathan looks at him for some clue, but Childermass’s gaze is cast down at the package where his hands rest. “Have you had dealings with this sort of magic?”

“Some little experience this past winter. Not with gentry, but I think their insides must work the same as any farmer’s wife.”

“Childermass, is there any further thing you wish to tell me now about your skills, or do you intend to remain a puzzle in order to astonish me with each individual revelation?”

In answer to this, Childermass merely rises from the table, with a wearied rolling of his eyes, tucks the package back under his arm and starts for the door. “Come on,” he urges over his shoulder. Jonathan places some francs upon the table and follows, quite helpless.

For such a man as Talbot, prey to the worst fears that may befall a new husband, there cannot be the least objection to the exchange. After some short introductions, which Mrs Talbot is barely able to receive, Jonathan sees Childermass settle on the edge of the sickbed, murmuring some words he cannot catch, then retires for discretion’s sake to their rooms. For a few minutes he listens to the coughing issuing from Talbot’s rooms, which seems to rise and fall like a tide, drawn forth by some inexorable urging. Whether or not the spell is working he has not the smallest idea, and so as to divert himself from unprofitable speculation, he takes the brass bowl from Childermass’s trunk and fills it with wash-water.

What he sees as he leans upon his hands and peers into the clearing waters could not be more distracting, for there stands Arabella, leaning upon her hands at the table where she is used to write her letters and peering into a silver basin of her own. Jonathan is so surprised as to step suddenly back from the table, stumble over the yellow cushioned chair and land on his fundament upon the floor, the chair overturned and tangled up with his feet. He is in the process of righting himself when Childermass returns to the room.

“I had not thought you were that drunk.”

“Childermass! No, I assure you, it is nothing of the sort. Only come and look.”

Childermass picks up the chair and places it by the table in its proper station and then they stand together, shoulder to shoulder, and look into the bowl. Arabella is there still, and on her face is a little smile, as if something has amused her greatly.

“It is a vision that occupies her, is it not?”

“I think it must be.”

“She has magic, then. Arabella is one of your new practical magicians!”

“I had not heard of it, but then Mrs Strange has not been heard of in England for many months.”

“But you think it possible?”

“Aye, it is possible.”

For a few moments more, no one of them moves, not Jonathan and Childermass in their sitting-room in Rheims, and not Arabella, somewhere in Italy. Then a thought begins to rise up, and take hold, and it is so unsettling that the hair seems to stand at the back of Jonathan’s neck.

“She is looking at us,” he whispers.

With an effort that contains within it a quite unexpected degree of bravery, he lifts his right hand in a mime of greeting. But though he holds the salutation for a time, she does not return it.

“Well, after all, perhaps not.”

Childermass leaves his side then, and Jonathan watches as he removes his coat and lays it on the yellow chair, watches him loosen and take off his neckcloth. It is not quite seemly, but what is that to the purpose when you live in another fellow’s pockets, and have slept side by side in a little bed.

He clears his throat. “But that she has magic - this does indeed show us something.” Childermass sits in the chair, careless for once amid the pile of his discarded clothes, and rests his chin on a hand. “This serves as proof, does it not, that it was her I heard in the darkness? She has used magic to fetch me back. Do you see, Childermass, she may be able to assist us to recover Mr Norrell also.”

“I thought you said it was love called you back.”

“Love and magic, yes, it is both. She is my wife, my own dearest Arabella. It was love I felt, but it is magic, too.”

Childermass looks to the wall of the sitting-room for a moment, as if to gather some patience. “Then so it is. But tell me - if that is to be the method, where will we find such another _lover_ for Mr Norrell?”

There is so great a quantity of sarcasm in his words that Jonathan has no instant response, and finds himself quite off the track of his thoughts. “I do not - Childermass, are you well? Was there some mishap with Mrs Talbot?”

“No, there was no mishap. I left her quite peacefully asleep, and her husband so grateful it seemed to cause him pain. I had to refuse some offers of payment before he would let me come back here, and in the end he would make me take a bottle of wine in thanks.” He twitches his head towards the door, and indeed there sits by the painted screen a bottle of Madame Cliquot’s. “I am tired by it, that is all.”

“Of course. It is a tremendous piece of magic you have done. You must rest. Will you take a glass first?”

“It is not really my drink, Mr Strange. I took it only because I thought you might want it.”

“Oh.”

Childermass stands, and he is a little bent over with exhaustion, just as he was after the party at Gatcombe’s. “If you do not need me, I will rest for a while, as you say.”

“Why should I need - no, of course, with the greatest good will. Do go, Childermass, and sleep.”

When the door is closed behind him, Jonathan turns back to the vision of Arabella - she is moving now through a little shadowed hallway - but his own surroundings distract overmuch, and after a minute he leaves the bowl. The bottle of champagne he collects and places upon the table, and does not open, but stands with his hand upon the neck of it for a suspended moment, while he contemplates the pile of Childermass’s clothing upon the yellow chair. Carefully he lifts the coat and hangs it over the chair’s back, so that its shoulders are filled out and do not become spoiled with creases; the neckcloth he tucks around the collar, so that it seems as though the chair itself is wearing Childermass’s habit. Jonathan runs his hands over the shoulders of the coat, the rough wool catching at every crease and callous of his palms.

Something yet lies upon the chair, though, and Jonathan recognises it as the package Childermass had been carrying under his arm after his appointment. Curiosity cannot be suspended until Childermass is awake, and so he opens the paper covering and finds a fat book entitled _Les Arts Magicaux des Anglais_. It is poorly printed and abridging such a number of tables as would anger Norrell exceedingly, translated in a rough style if Jonathan’s French can be relied upon, but Sutton-Grove unmistakeably. Jonathan had not thought to see a copy of it again in his life, and his excitement is tempered only by a memory of the tedium to be experienced in reading it. Only a book hunter of the most skilled kind might have been able to uncover it - and with such despatch. Surely one need only hint to Childermass that one lacks a certain book or a certain thing, and there it appears before one. And thereupon, he closes the book again, and sets it back in its paper covering. It is for Segundus, of course.

~

Two days later they are on the road to Geneva. The Talbots bade them farewell in the hall of the house, Mrs Talbot upon a short sopha and wrapped in a thin yellow blanket, but with the colour of returning health upon her. Mr Talbot, standing at her side, saluted them both in turn, keeping Childermass’s hand for not a second less than he did Jonathan’s, and wished them as much good fortune in their travels as they had bestowed upon his.

A day’s journey from Rheims, Jonathan and Childermass reach Troyes, and after a further interminable day spent travelling, arrive fatigued and in a fair degree of relief in the city of Dijon. Childermass has spent the latter part of the day upon a horse, the coach too full to accommodate all those who had money for a place, and himself, in Jonathan’s opinion, always too ready to give way to those who may little deserve it. The conversation in the afternoon was astonishingly tedious, and Jonathan passed a large portion of it scarcely attending, excepting the need to offer an occasional murmur of assent, and instead peering out of the window of the coach to see how Childermass fared.

He fared well, for aught Jonathan could discern, his seat as upright and stoical as it always appears, even when the fine weather broke at three o’clock and sent a great rainstorm to drum upon his hat. By the evening, however, when the journey is broken, he has a started a cough, and seems a thinner, more colourless version of himself. They stop at a pink-painted inn in Dijon, where the owner, a fat man with a peculiar black wig and grey mutton chops mistakes Childermass for the groom and offers him a bed among the horses. Perhaps it is this slight, and perhaps simple tiredness coupled with a cough that takes him at once to his chamber, forbearing to take a beer with Jonathan. Jonathan undertakes a halting conversation with that same owner, but cannot sustain it over an hour.

In the morning, the cough has turned rough and sour, and from the look about Childermass’s eyes, Jonathan suspects it has kept him from sleep for a great stretch of the night.

“We need not depart today,” he says, a sincere concern proving a temper to any impatience he may feel to be out of France and further along. “The Monsieur with the mutton chops has said we may keep the rooms for one or two further nights, should we need to.”

“Bloody well over my dead body,” is the abrupt refusal, and Jonathan does not press the matter. When they reach Geneva on the fifth of June, however, he knows it for a mistake.

Childermass’s strength has all but evaporated over the last half day and he shivers extremely and seems not to heed any conversation, and Jonathan must pay double to bring him into the house where they have secured lodgings. The landlady holds a handkerchief over her mouth as she directs them up the staircase to their rooms, and only when Jonathan has despaired of a maid, settled Childermass upon a bed in one of the rooms, and begun with some awkwardness to remove his outer clothes, does a knock finally sound at the door. A little girl of perhaps sixteen or seventeen enters, dressed not in the smart attire of the house, but in clothing that is patched and dusty. She has dun-coloured hair loosely held in a yellow cap, and teeth that have not seen a powder in the course of several years, if indeed ever. She is, however, carrying a large bowl filled with cut herbs and scraps of linen.

She bobs a dour little curtsey at Jonathan, though she does not attempt eye contact.

“Hello,” Jonathan offers, as she sets down the bowl and begins to untie Childermass’s neckcloth. Her gaze darts up to meet his for an instant, but she does not respond.

“My friend has a cough,” he persists, pointing at Childermass, and offers a weak demonstration of his own, in case she has not understood, and at this she looks up again, in some quite evident disparagement. In the event it is unnecessary as Childermass coughs himself, hard and painful-sounding. The little maid pauses in undressing and rests a hand on his shoulder until it passes.

“A - a fever,” Jonathan says, approaching and laying a tentative hand of his own upon Childermass’s forehead. Heat strikes into his palm in a degree that startles him, and he withdraws the hand quickly.

She seems hardly to notice his qualm, but swiftly loosens Childermass’s shirt and then kneels to remove his shoes. She has him in the bed beneath the blankets in short order, and it is then Childermass begins to seem in truth an invalid, his face grey and damp upon the bolster, and Jonathan experiences for the first time a palpable sort of fright.

“It was those blasted Talbots,” he tells the maid, quite uselessly. “He shall recover, shall he not?”

Whether or not Childermass will recover, Jonathan is not immediately to discover. The little maid, whose name the landlady reports to be Ulla, busies herself the whole afternoon in soaking rags and applying plasters, during which Jonathan’s entire function is to hold whatever is handed to him, and to keep his mouth closed.

By dinnertime, Jonathan is in such a condition of perplexity that he settles not to have any food sent up, but to go to a chophouse he had frequented during his previous time in Geneva. A strong wind is blowing across the lake when he leaves the house, pushing thick clouds across the sky, but the gentlemen and ladies who walk about the nearest part of the city are dressed for a summer evening and talk brightly to each other. The chophouse is busy with gentlemen of all sorts, and the food and ale quite a match for what Jonathan remembers, and yet it savours of nothing, and he eats and drinks with a haste borne of a strong regret for having left the house at all.

Jonathan passes a great deal of the following two days seated in a tall-backed chair to the side of Childermass’s bed, and attempting to make something of the French news sheets, or pacing from one side to the other of the room, getting in the way of Ulla as she moves about changing linen, washing, and applying fresh plasters. The sick room loses its terror in those hours and acquires a deadening banality, in which Jonathan begins to feel a certain resentment. A _fever_ of all things! In _June_! When they even now might be crossing the Alps into Italy. Surely Childermass need only try to feel a little better, and he will rally.

Finally, when no such improvement appears, that resentment dissolves into a pale sort of despair, the pacing ceases, news sheets are put aside, and Jonathan seats himself at the bedside once more to watch the little changes upon Childermass’s face, and set about some internal bargaining for his recovery. His great neglect, which has cost him so dearly once before, will be mended. His magic, so intent always upon his own uses alone, will be put to more benign purpose.

On the third evening, fresh linen is needed, and Jonathan thinks to open up Childermass’s trunk, now situated in his own bedchamber, and search it for the old shirts and linen things they recently replaced. It is not to be supposed that Childermass would have been so spendthrift as to discard them.

Indeed he has not, and they are there, tucked into vacancies or wrapped around other items. One shirt Jonathan finds is wrapped around the raven-topped beechwood cane, which he sets aside upon the bed, another around the French copy of Sutton-Grove. It is with a small start that Jonathan recognises the book, and recalls with dismay their argument in Rheims and the uncomfortably sour feeling produced at the contemplation of Childermass’s relationship with John Segundus. Childermass had surely intended to send the book, and once the linen is delivered to Ulla, Jonathan orders himself to sit at the desk in his room and begin a letter.

_Rue Des-Alpes, Geneva  
Jonathan Strange to Mr John Segundus, Starecross School, June 7th, 1818._

_My dear Mr Segundus  
You must wonder at my writing directly, following a break of some years in our correspondence. My heart is heavy with the news I must give you, that is to say that your friend John Childermass is, I think, gravely ill. He took a fever during our journey in the northern part of France, and has for some days been beyond what help I might give. A little girl from the town is tending him, and I pay her for it with as much coin as is available to me for the purpose. _

_I know this news will grieve you extremely, and I must own that I consider myself much responsible, for the illness proceeded from an act of charitable magic I might myself have performed - and indeed might perform upon him now - if I had troubled myself to learn the method. You will recognise, of course, an impulse in him to plain goodness and to the gentler arts of magic, which I have only recently begun to recognise. I hope that idea gives you some comfort, and as well the knowledge that his thoughts were so far with you a week ago that he sought out the volume I enclose, with the wish that it might help you and your scholars._

_Be assured that I look daily for signs of improvement in our friend, and will write further with news of him when I may._

_Your friend,_

_Jonathan Strange_

After the book is wrapped and the letter sealed, Jonathan takes it to Ulla, conveying perhaps with the urgency of his voice or perhaps that of his purse that it is to be sent by the night post. Then, left alone in the sickroom, Jonathan takes it into his head to appropriate the cards from the pocket of Childermass’s coat.

He lays out seven cards upon his desk, as he watched Childermass do in the boarding house in York. The paper of the cards is worn from continual use, soft and fibrous at the edges and patched everywhere so as to make the cards themselves serviceable but unhandsome. Jonathan handles them tenderly. The first two cards turned are the same exactly as in that first reading: the Knight of Wands and the World - himself, he thinks, himself and a journey, just as before - thereafter they are unfamiliar: two cards turned on their head, the Seven of Coins and the Hanged Man, then the Ten of Swords, the Wheel of Fortune, and finally Death. The only meaning Jonathan may get from the spread is one he will not consider, and so he gathers the cards in some impatience with himself.

“Well, after all, it is a simple man that will impose a simple meaning upon such matters, and one yet stupider that places a secure dependence upon a skill he does not in any way possess.”

Thus chastised, he sits for a time at the desk, his hands steepled together to keep them still, and looks out upon the view. The ladies and gentlemen of Geneva stroll about amid the bustle of the lakefront, stopping to admire the boats upon the water or the artists’ work set up under the lanterns at the side of the street, and to point at some notable object or other and chatter and touch each other in the casual fashion of dear friends. It is something akin to a dumbshow when it reaches Jonathan, alone in his room, and he can only guess at what they might be saying to one another. After a time, the daylight is so far faded that Jonathan must see about lighting the candles and making ready for bed. He finds the raven-topped cane still upon the counterpane, where he had placed it earlier. It is a peculiar bedfellow, but he allows it to remain since the space allows.

Jonathan dreams of the King’s Roads, that endless evening landscape criss-crossed with paths, bridges and staircases, most of which have not been trodden upon for hundreds of years. In the midst of it he finds himself at the foot of a bridge unknown to him, that zigzags back and forth across an inky canal, and a silvery light at his side. It darts away before he can see it clearly, but when he turns to find it, it appears again at the edge of his vision, at the head of glittering path of light, such as once led him to the fairy in his brugh.

“Then I am mad again, surely.”

A natural conclusion, but the light is insistent, tugs at a place deep within him, warm and full of unusual hope, and he follows it, madness or not. It leads him to and fro across the canal, then up, out of the valley, up a steep set of stairs where the ground drops away until it reaches a platform high up in the air, and a door. The door opens easily, and instantly the thread of light vanishes and the darkness changes shape.

A smell of herbs and mustard drifts out through the door; it is Childermass’s room and Jonathan is awake and shivering in his chemise, the cane in his hand. Something has happened; there was a noise, or else something has changed and a sense of it has awoken him - it must be that. Behind him is no longer the King’s Roads but a short panelled vestibule in a house in Geneva.

“Childermass,” he whispers, but there is no response. “Childermass.”

He steps into the room, leaning the cane upon the jamb and closing the door behind him. The candles have burnt down, and he has to put out a hand so as not to collide with the furnishings. As he nears the bed, an ember drops in the fireplace with a crunch, and he jumps a little at the noise in the silence and darkness. From Childermass there is no reaction, and a sudden fear comes over Jonathan that his friend is no longer in the bed, at least not in spirit. An indistinct mumble dispels that phantom after a moment or two, but does not stop Jonathan’s heart jumping in his chest.

“Childermass,” he whispers again, but his friend is asleep. In the chill of the room, and in the aftermath of his fright, Jonathan cannot persuade himself to return to his own chamber, but quietly lifts the sheets on the opposite side of the bed to the one where Childermass is propped, and climbs in. Childermass does not stir further, and so Jonathan shifts minutely closer, until his head is upon the same bolster and his face so close that he might rest it upon Childermass’s shoulder if the fancy took him. He remembers waking once in Newark in a warm bed and surrounded by the smell of tobacco, and feels momentarily heartsick at the cold, sour scent of infection that has replaced it.

He closes his eyes and waits for sleep, and just when it is slipping down upon him, Childermass makes an agitated sound, the mattress heaves, and a hand collides with Jonathan’s under the sheet. It is hot and damp and passes an uncomfortable heat into Jonathan’s own skin, but he takes no steps to remove it. Then sleep comes.

Ulla did not close the shutters before she left, and so it is early morning when Jonathan is wakened by the light. He blinks in the brightness, and finds himself face to face with Childermass, whose eyes are open and whose gaze is clear once more. For a moment Jonathan is so perplexed with relief that it does not occur to him that he will need to invent some spurious excuse for falling asleep in his friend’s bed, and speaks only what comes first to mind.

“So you are recovered. You have been ill for four days or more.”

Childermass blinks so slowly that Jonathan wonders if he is drifting back into slumber or fever, but there is a small tired twist of a smile and it cannot be so.

“Forgive me,” he says, his voice a thin crackle, and Jonathan grins so broadly that he must surely be showing every tooth in his head.

“Forgive you? When all of our linen is gone and I’ve been forced to spend five dinners’ worth of francs on a churlish little German girl to fetch and carry after you? I shall be forced to sell my belongings to recoup such great losses.”

Childermass opens his eyes, frowning, but smiles upon seeing Jonathan’s face and closes them once more. “If you’ve had to sell your bed, I am certainly sorry for it.”

Jonathan laughs, and though Childermass does not, Jonathan finds himself buoyed and comforted that they have shared this joke. He lingers awhile in the bed, his presence permitted by implication, while Childermass’s breathing deepens and slows. Only when he is asleep again, does Jonathan rise, straighten the covers about him, and step quietly back to his own bedchamber to begin another letter.

Childermass’s recovery is swift enough. When Ulla arrives to find the patient sitting up with a new colour in his cheeks, her eyes widen, and her face seems to flush almost in sympathy. Jonathan presses a handsome purse of francs into her hand, and has her out of sight upon the instant.

“Will you nurse me yourself, then, Mr Strange?”

“Why,” Jonathan asks, turning back from the door. “Do you doubt my skill?”

Childermass huffs gently, in evident amusement. “There is no need in any case. In two days I shall be well enough.”

“You are very confident.”

“It is the way of it. The borrowed sickness is sharp, but leaves quickly.”

“The way of it?” Jonathan sits down hard in the wooden chair by the bed. “Do you mean to tell me, Childermass - do I have the right of this? - that you have taken this fever from Mrs Talbot in the knowledge that the spell would transfer the infection to you, that it was your frank intent that it do so? And am I to understand that you have undergone such a ‘borrowed sickness’ before? And borrowed from whom, may I ask?”

“From the farmer’s wife this past January. It was milder, her sickness, but its beginning and end were the same.”

“You might have died!” Jonathan is forced to stand again. “Gods - I even wrote -!” he breaks off, the accusation unfinished.

“I am not some milksop, sir. I can withstand a cough.” Jonathan can feel Childermass’s eyes steadily upon him as he paces, working himself into something of a fury. “You wrote what?”

“Never mind!”

“This puts you out of temper.”

“Yes, _sir_. This puts me a very great deal out of temper. And can you wonder at it? We are come here on this venture as companions, as _friends_ \- trusted, so I thought. I would not have had my friend expose himself to such a risk, nor to conceal from me such exposure and such risk. I had thought we might be in Italy now, that we might even now be engaged in research together. I had thought -” again the thought is broken, and another arrives in its place. “Why must you keep these damned endless secrets? It is not a charming habit!”

“I am sorry that we are delayed in our journey. I did not expect that I would be laid so low.”

“That is not -!” _That is not the point_ , Jonathan means to say, but he finds he must instead leave the room immediately, and so he does, closing the door behind him with a deal of force.

After a half hour of striding about the lakefront in a vast rage, Jonathan’s conscience delivers a vision of Childermass alone and still helpless in his room, with no little maid to spoon broth or replace a bolster, and repentance follows swiftly. He returns at once to the house and orders a plate of cheese and cold meat made up and a cup of watered beer. Much relieved to hear of the beginning of Childermass’s recovery, the landlady offers the service of her own staff once more, but Jonathan refuses and takes the food himself.

“Forgive me, Childermass,” he says, perched upon the bedcovers, while Childermass eats. “I was a little peevish.”

“You were.”

“You did what was right for Mrs Talbot. I do perceive that. It is only that I do not enjoy being kept in the dark. I have been in the dark rather too long.”

Childermass regards him with eyes that have regained their ability to pierce through a person rather too quickly for Jonathan’s liking, and he feels a little heat come into his face.

“So you would drag every thought out of my head?”

“Well, I -”

“You might not want them once you had them.”

He must concede the truth of that. It is easier to flatter oneself that one receives regard, even admiration, when one need not eavesdrop on the interior of one’s friends. More than once, Jonathan has recalled with pleasure that conversation had long ago with Childermass in Spitalfields when his poor book was in preparation. He has no wish to dispel such pleasures with a long recounting of his faults, which would doubtless ensue if Childermass were to loosen his tongue upon every occasion.

“Perhaps not.”

Childermass sets aside his plate, and leans his head back upon the bolster.

“And now, you must wish to sleep further.”

“No. I wish for my cards, if you would be good enough to fetch them. They are in the pocket of my coat.”

“Ah. In fact -”

When Jonathan returns with them, Childermass spends several seconds examining them carefully, and eyeing Jonathan with some suspicion.

“What did you think you were at?”

“I believe I thought myself to be finding answers in a time of great uncertainty.”

“And were you?”

“Not in the slightest. I might as well have poured candle wax into cold water and tried to divine the future from its shapes.”

Childermass laughs a little, already beginning to turn the cards: the Knight of Wands, the World, the Seven of Coins and the Hanged Man, both reversed, the Ten of Swords, the Wheel of Fortune, Death.

“There!” Jonathan jumps up from the bed and points at the cards. “It is the same reading. Are you certain you shuffled the cards correctly?”

Childermass’s response consists only in a slight but perceptible rolling of his eyes. “Do you wish me to tell you what I think it means?”

Jonathan hesitates. “No, in fact. No, I don’t believe I do. I shall stick for the time being to my news sheets.”

And so he does, seating himself on the wooden chair, and watching out of the corner of his eye as Childermass touches a gentle finger to one or two of the cards, then gathers them up and begins again.

The journey across the Alps into Italy can be long and arduous, even in the best-sprung coach, and it is three further days before Childermass is recovered enough for them to embark. On the fourth day, eager to depart, Jonathan rises early and knocks upon his door to find no one within. A glance out of the window reveals him leaning upon the porch outside, gazing at the lake and smoking a pipe. Jonathan watches for a moment or two, and sees the landlady come out to him and hand him a small packet.

“Who is your letter from?” Jonathan asks, coming out onto the porch, trying to put into his voice every indication that the answer could not matter to him less.

Childermass does not look up, but continues frowning down at his letter. “John Segundus.”

“Ah. And, er, and what has Mr Segundus to say?”

Jonathan fears a response that will reveal his own ridiculousness in having written so desperately to Segundus, but no such response is forthcoming, despite Childermass’s deepening frown. A single piece of paper is handed over, and it is not the letter itself, but a portion of text or verse. Jonathan reads the first few lines:

_To the first of his kind I will give a heart stolen and a book shared._  
_The North shall break his bounds and search out old friends and a new king_  
 _He will call to south, east and west but receive not the answer he seeks,_  
 _yet the North will be closer to magic than he has ever been._

“Then this is -?”

But before there is a chance to draw conclusions about what it is, much less finish reading what is upon the page, a coach is drawing up, and a footman dashing into the house and up the stairs. Childermass taps out his pipe, folds his part of the letter and puts it into the pocket of his coat, then assists with the business of loading their trunks.

“Now? We leave now?” the coachman is asking Jonathan. “Is good weather. Is good road. We arrive Milan on Tuesday.”

“On Tuesday! Do you hear that, Childermass? Well, then, let us be off.”

Jonathan, his head suddenly full of Italy and little else, holds the door open for Childermass, receives for his efforts a raised eyebrow, watches as his friend folds himself into the carriage, then climbs in after. It is fully ten minutes, and they are wheeling through the southern outskirts of Geneva, before he recalls the paper hastily tucked into his own pocket and takes it out to read.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> this chapter is about a month later than planned, and suffered quite a bit of re-writing. apologies if you have been waiting, and thank you to berry for reminding me of what was important!


	5. Chapter 5

_To the first of his kind I will give a heart stolen and a book shared._  
The North shall break his bounds and seek old friends and a new king  
He will call to south, east and west but receive not the answer he seeks,  
yet the North will be closer to magic than he has ever been.  
The Knight of Wands shall forsake his exile, and leave his light in the darkness  
He will make new roads forged with new magic but return his heart to the North.  
My [here some erasures] – _I think it may be gate or else hinge? – shall not fall from the sky but arise from the earth;_  
New [here more erasures] _shall heed the voice of the North and stem from old  
Wisdom thought lost will be uncovered and the first will return in a distant country._

_The reading for the most part is clear to me, though the meaning remains quite hidden. When I pronounced it first, Vinculus began capering about, and then when I bid him be still that I might make sense of it, he said to me, “The reader need not understand what is written. He has only to read it.”_

_I need not tell you, Childermass, that I was quite insulted, for I know that you will be able to understand entirely the offence that was intended. However, that it is a prophecy once more seems beyond doubt._

_But I must –_

Jonathan’s scrap of letter is bordered on either side by rough tears. He and his companion have been in Milan for fully a day and a half, and if the portion of the letter parted from Jonathan’s has been set down anywhere, he has yet to lay eyes upon it. He touches those tears now by habit more than curiosity, having long since learnt to leave off both the enquiry after the sundered parts – which received a short and rather unmannerly response – and the fruitless hunt after the same. Besides there is much to keep a person occupied in that which remains, among the Raven King’s characteristically opaque phrasings, as much as those which Segundus cannot make out at all, and indeed Jonathan is sunk in contemplation of _the voice of the North_ , when a more corporeal voice startles him. 

“You are in my room again.”

“Ah! You are back. Yes, my apologies, but the light is so much fairer here for concentrated study.” 

“I wonder why you insisted on my taking it, if you meant to occupy it yourself so often.”

Jonathan turns to look at him, but Childermass is engaged rather in laying off his hat upon a clothes horse than in awaiting an apposite response, which excuses him from finding one. “Have you ordered lunch?” he asks instead.

“You think of your stomach remarkably often,” Childermass says mildly, pointing at a dish of crusts at Jonathan’s elbow. “You’ve still the leavings of breakfast.”

“Well, Childermass, I find that hardly fair. I think of your stomach, too. You have been out some hours.”

“Something over two hours,” Childermass says. “And I have your book.” 

It lands upon the table with force enough to rattle the plate and shake its crusts, a magnificent volume, thick as an oak rafter from the dining-room at Ashfair, in deep red leather covers, tooled to the front and spine with a border of gilt leaves and doric dentils. At the merest touch it falls open, onion-skin pages parting with a heavy sigh, slumping and sliding apart to show the tiny print inside. Jonathan runs the pads of his fingers gently across a chapter title, _A fvlle Accompt of Magicks for Disgyse, Misprision and Fyckle Errour_. 

“How shall we proceed?” he says. It is a task containing as much in it to daunt as to excite.

“We shall do as Mr Norrell would. Begin at the beginning and read it to the end.” He leans over Jonathan, closing the book carefully once more, and reopening it to the first page of contents. “And make notes.”

Jonathan laughs. “I thought you a man of instinct, Childermass.”

“Then you know only half of me, Mr Strange.” As he straightens again, he rests a hand on Jonathan’s shoulder, perhaps in the hope of reassuring that it is a good enough half that Jonathan knows, but the surprise of that touch, modest though it is, stops all thought for a moment.

He clears his throat. “In that case we should send for lunch and begin at once, should we not?”

“I think we should go out of the house.” He takes his hand from Jonathan’s shoulder, and Jonathan permits a breath to slide outward. “There is something you should see.”

The modest house in which they have taken rooms is by some degree the least remarkable of all its neighbours on the Corso Venezia, situated as it is next to the sober grace of the Casa Fontana-Silvestri and a scant twenty yards from the brash neoclassical imposture of the Palazzo Serbelloni. Indeed on this Wednesday lunchtime, the tourists sweep past it with their glasses lowered just as usual, and there is no question but that they are failing to notice what Childermass and now Jonathan cannot help but see. 

Growing up out of the sterile stone of the porch of their own unremarkable casa is an infant ash tree. A slim stripling, pale and supple and with the tenderest green leaves that shiver, though there is no wind to move them. The tree’s limbs seem to reach towards the house, pliant and longing, and as Jonathan and Childermass watch, the first sapling branch reaches its object and bursts with a new growth of leaves that spread jealously over the cold white stone of the entranceway.

“Well, that was not there yesterday,” Jonathan sees fit to remark. “What do you imagine is the meaning of it?”

“I do not know yet.” The slow dark note of Childermass’s voice suggests that if he does not know yet, he is quite upon the way of knowing, although not of divulging. It is familiar and frustrating sensation.

“We must however admit the possibility that it means _something_. Trees, in my experience, are not in the habit of sprouting from nothing. Are you sure you have not inadvertently done some stray piece of wild magic, Childermass?”

Childermass looks at him, and his eyes narrow perceptibly. “I think I have better control over myself than that, sir. Are you sure _you_ have not?”

It is a little hurtful, perhaps, phrased in such a way and turned upon oneself, Jonathan reflects, and he is after all in no mood to bicker. “No indeed. There must be something of a quite different nature at work here.” In an effort at conciliation, he adds, “Perhaps we might write of it to your Mr Segundus.”

“Ay, perhaps,” Childermass says, though his words, affable in themselves, fail to conceal some confounding hint of tension. “You are in the habit of calling other men mine. I do not understand why; I assure you I lay no claim to any person but myself.”

“I beg your pardon, Childermass. It was a quite thoughtless expression. In any case we must watch this little tree to uncover whatever meaning there may be in it. But first, I think we must get some lunch. I fear this lack of food is making us both a little cross.”

Lunch, and some discussion of the work ahead, sets them back on an easy footing. Indeed after three-quarters of an hour and some rather excellent veal, Jonathan feels quite ready to embark upon the trickier topics once more.

“I have been considering some of the grand mysteries that face us, Childermass,” he begins, spooning a dessert whose name he did not heed but which resembles nothing so much as a brandywine syllabub. “The ash tree outside our lodging – there is one. The raven cane – there is another.”

Childermass looks up. “The cane? What of it?”

“The night your fever broke, I dreamt I was back upon the King’s Roads. When I awoke, I was at your door with a most urgent impulse to action. I found that I was holding that same cane, though I don’t remember taking it up. What do you make of that?”

“I hardly know, Mr Strange.” He puts down his spoon, his own syllabub no more than half eaten, lays his hand upon the table and directs his gaze out of the window, as if this is a conversation that is neither wished nor can be avoided. Jonathan persists.

“It does seem to me that there are two possibilities: that the impulse, proceeding from some influence that came upon me during sleep, directed me both to take up the cane and to set forth from my bed upon a strange path; or that the path itself was opened and laid before me at the same moment that I took up the cane and in some regard was a projection of its own magic. However these influences act upon one in sleep is a thing that should be looked into. Perhaps I could sleep with it near at hand again, and see if another path is opened.” 

Childermass curls his fingers into the palm of his hand, and as he turns back, his eyes describe an ironic arc. “And it does seem to _me_ , Mr Strange, that it is the last thing you should be fretting over.”

“You told me once that the cane did not work as you had hoped it might, did you not?”

There is a grunt, as of assent reluctantly given.

“Well, then. I must imagine that you too have looked into the matter. You are a scholar of magic just as I am, Childermass.” Childermass blinks at him slowly. “I do not believe that you would sell a magical thing or put it away so lightly, and without knowing its purpose.”

“That may be, but I am not concerned with it now, and so I am inclined to put it away. I suggest that you do the same. I do not think it will bring you any more joy than it has brought me. You would spend your time with more profit at your brass bowl, looking for your wife.” Childermass draws the pipe from his coat pocket and begins to press tobacco into its bowl.

It is true that Jonathan is no closer to finding Arabella, though he has sought her less than he might. The last evening when rest would not come, he took out the bowl, found her asleep for her own part, her face half-buried in a too-soft bolster, and felt as much petty annoyance for her sleep and his wakefulness as he did longing to have his own head upon the pillow next to her. This morning, waiting impatiently for Childermass’s return, and sullen with his reading, he took the brass bowl out again and found her engaged in writing a letter, whose text he could not pick out.

“Have you ever been married?” he asks now, and Childermass fumbles his pipe a little.

“Have I –? No, I have not.”

“Well. I may say it brings with it many things to recommend it, but an easy mind is not one of them.”

“I will take your word for it.”

“Are you intending to eat the rest of that pudding?”

Childermass pushes it over, emitting something close to a sigh. “Either way, I think it will give you more pleasure.”

“Quite so.” Jonathan smiles at him, and he turns to look back out of the window. 

~

When they return from luncheon, a small cluster of waxy purple flowers has grown unseasonably upon the ash sapling, and a letter awaits them. This time Jonathan is permitted to see the whole of it.

_Starecross School, Lancashire  
John Segundus to Mr John Childermass, Corso Venezia, Milan, June 14th, 1818._

_My dear Sir,_

_First let me express the hope that your health continues well. For my own part I have taken a small summer cold from some of the students, but after two days abed, it now bothers me very little._

_I had hoped to proceed with my reading of the new Book as the end of term approaches, however Vinculus took the advantage of my indisposition to leave Starecross and journey to the tavern in Winewall. I must assume that he reached his objective, and will admit that I do sometimes regret paying him a small stipend for our joint research, for as I write this I have not seen him in fully five days. I include this detail for I think you must be eager to know of the Book and how our work goes on, but indeed there have been further strange events connected with books that I must now tell you of._

_A student of mine, Benwich, came to my study Tuesday last with a question on a rather curious point of magic that I was not at once able to answer – indeed I sometimes rue my own poor scholarship and yet poorer library, when such needful times arise, and do long for a colleague who may supplement such deficits and with whom I might journey together in this –_

“You are creasing the letter, Mr Strange.”

“My apologies.” He straightens the paper, and lays his palms flat upon the table.

_– in this scholarly endeavour. It was with such fruitless thoughts that I reached for the copy of Sutton-Grove so kindly procured by yourself and sent to me by Mr Strange during your recent illness, only to find it by some pounds heavier than when I last took it up. Indeed when I turned to the excursus upon confinement spells in chapter fifty-nine that I hoped might answer our enquiry, I found not only that the entire table of spells pertaining to methods of enclosure within species of wood had been restored to the edition, but in addition that it was once more in English. In point of fact, it seemed not the copy that Mr Strange had sent to me at all, but one complete and perfect in each part, and which no longer taxed my meagre French. My surprise was so great that I am afraid I became rather fixated upon my own poring through the book, such that poor Benwich’s enquiry was deferred for some minutes.._

_How came my book to be so transformed? And was it indeed a transformation of my own book, or had some other physical book come to replace it by human or magical means? Mr Honeyfoot was quite as lost for an answer as myself when I brought the subject before him that evening, and I was to continue in this state of unresolved conjecture through dinner, which Mrs Caddy informed me was a fricasée of veal but which I confess might have been a plain unsalted pottage for all that I tasted it. I wished every moment for a man of learning – pace my dear Mr Honeyfoot – with whom I might discuss these questions, for I was quite in a stew. But more was to come._

_The following morning, that being Wednesday, brought a letter to Starecross from Thomas Burnham, a bookseller of Northampton, with whom I had corresponded in the autumn of 1802. Our correspondence at that time touched on the existence in the north of England of a single copy of Belasis’s Instructions, a rumour of which had reached me by some book fellow or other on the Charing-Cross-Road, I do now forget precisely who. Mr Burnham had been unable to furnish any evidence to support the rumour – though, as we were to discover some years later, a copy did indeed exist – and in your purview! Now, Burnham’s most confounding news last week was that an edition of that very book had come into his hands, despite the loss of the Hurtfew copy. I of course wrote back immediately to request the book, hardly believing such a thing to be true. Yesterday it arrived at Starecross, a little foxed to be sure, but undoubtedly the text itself, just as I had seen it in Norrell’s library._

_And so this letter brings the glad news that our little Academy’s library is now able to boast not one, but two of the principal lost texts of English Magic! How such a thing has come to pass, I cannot begin to guess, and I would most gladly welcome your own conjecture upon the point, for I am quite filled up with excitement at the expansion of our scholarship, indeed to such a pitch that scarcely allows for speculation._

_And so I entreat you, Childermass – have you heard before of such a thing? We are naturally all acquainted with the disappearance into nothing of books, after Mr Strange’s sad experience – do forgive my mentioning it – but with the appearance? It is a thing wholly new to me._

_I shall be at Starecross for the whole of the next week, and await your earliest response._

_Your respectful friend,_

_JS_

Jonathan passes the letter back to Childermass, who has been watching him read from a cushioned corner chair, and finds on his face all the appearance of a meditative type of boredom, quite at odds with the news.

“You look as if you had read of your grandmother bottling preserves, Childermass.” And that at least produces a surprised twitch of the eyebrows. “Surely you cannot have heard of such a thing before, as our friend asks, can you?”

“Not at all. It is a thing I cannot fathom. I only wished to wait and hear what you thought of it.” And so saying, Childermass uncrosses his legs and leans forward, his elbows upon his knees, with a hungry sort of curiosity showing in his dark eyes, as if Jonathan’s explanation is to contain within in it the profoundest insight. It engenders a rather curious flutter of anxiety.

“Ah, well. In that case, you force me to confess that I cannot see how to interpret this event myself. I had thought that the removal of these books into the darkness had been an intent of the Raven King. That with this wild, natural and democratic magic you say now prevails in England – of which I have myself seen but little – there was no longer a need or want of such dull scholarly inheritance. But perhaps this was not his meaning.”

“You think it a mistake – that the books were lost?”

Jonathan stands from the chair by the desk, warming to the subject, and begins to stride a little back and forth, his fingers twining and untwining themselves behind his back, aware of Childermass’s eyes upon him at every step. “A mistake? I think we must not venture so far. I myself have stood upon the King’s Roads both awake and in sleep, have travelled back from the darkness – though we do not yet fully know by what means. These books, though lost, have the power to be recovered. And we know that, however close his purpose, the Raven King has allowed for these things.”

“For what is lost to be recovered.”

“Precisely so. And for the old to be put to new use. He provides both the means and the road, Childermass.” Jonathan stops pacing, and strides so abruptly up to the corner chair where his friend sits, leaning towards him, that Childermass seems compelled to sit back. “And it for us to connect the two.”

~

Jonathan dreams of the darkness that night. Not the inkpot black of the dreams that visited him when he first returned, but one that more closely mirrors a recollection of the Pillar. For he is in a large room that resembles nothing so much as the library at Hurtfew: the perpetual dusk which had come to it and the arched bookcases which had been there always, though some change has also been wrought. Books there are still, reshelved after the calamity of the ravens, but the carvings – the leaves and roots – have quickened from their dead wood and grow now about the bookcases. The branches twist along each length of shelf, their tips insinuating between musty pages, berries no longer demurely tucked into the niches and corners, but hanging heavy and full over the books themselves, seem ready to split themselves open upon the paper; the roots spread out into the room, half-tipping the desk where Childermass used to sit with that dour expression hanging on his brow and his mind set upon some letter. It is as if a library had been planted in a forest by a careful archivist, and following some regrettable change of management or tenancy, the forest has been allowed to creep inside and make free with the scholarship.

It is a thing Mr Norrell would not have borne. As the thought occurs to him, Jonathan becomes aware of gentle muttering behind him and turns to see the man himself, in his dressing gown and tasselled nightcap, crouched over a pile of books upon the floor.

“It must be… it must be….”

Gilbert Norrell stands and goes to the bookcase behind him, and Jonathan finds his tongue.

“My dear friend!” he exclaims, but receives no answer. “Can I assist –?”

“Confound it!” Mr Norrell shows no sign of having heard Jonathan, but begins pulling more books from the shelves, examining the interior of each and discarding it onto the pile on the floor. “It cannot have disappeared!” 

“Mr Norrell, I am extremely happy to see you, but this frenzy is most distressing.” Jonathan steps forward. “You must allow me to be of help to you. Whatever are you looking for?”

“It was – it was here! Oh damnation!” Norrell now ceases his searching, quite distracted, and sits upon the floor, one discarded book skittering from beneath him, all unheeded.

Jonathan starts forward, “My dear Mr Norrell –” and reaches a hand towards him, and as he does so the dusk of the library begins to deepen, clouds of black drifting and cloaking him all about until he can no longer see his outstretched arm before his face. It is a familiar and strangely comforting sensation to be so shrouded, and Jonathan has all but yielded his person to the gentle darkness, when another voice calls out to him, indistinct and hurt. Jonathan turns his head. It cries out again in growing alarm, formless in both matter and voice, but its desperation kneads at some soft place inside Jonathan and he falls back, slipping from the library, from the darkness, leaving Norrell in his slump on the floor.

He wakes in his bed in the house on Corso Venezia, his heart beating a double measure, agitated at once by the dream and by a summons which has not come to him since he left England. Once his pulse has slackened, he is certain that some useful thoughts will follow after, but before the point can be proven one way or the other, there is a great commotion in the passage outside.

Opening his door, a stub of candle held before him, Jonathan beholds a singular spectacle. Childermass is out of his bed, clad only in chemise and breeches, and those all awry, his hair wildly broken free of its queue. He does not take note of Jonathan standing startled in the doorway, but continues what he is about, which is to strike his beechwood cane most violently and repeatedly against a candle sconce. No sense comes from him but a series of rough grunts.

“Childermass! You will wake the house!”

He strikes the cane twice more, and it fractures almost apart, the top bent away from the bottom, and a small fragment propelled from its body to land at Jonathan’s feet. Only then does Childermass leave off and stand, his empty hand flat against the wall, head hanging and breathing hard.

“Childermass, what are you about?”

Childermass turns to face him, but where Jonathan had expected to see wildness, there is only the appearance of exhaustion or satiation, eyelids heavy, and hair loose over brow and cheek. His chemise is open at his throat to show a hard ridge of collarbone, and untucked from his breeches, as if he has ripped himself from bed and sleep with no thought to decency, but propelled by the urgency of this strange action. And now that the urgency has passed, Childermass crumples at the knees so that the upper part of his body slides down the wall until he is sitting upon the floor, his knees almost at his chin. 

Jonathan bends to pick up the broken fragment of wood at his feet, makes a small movement as if he would offer it up. It is not accepted.

“Where did you go?” Childermass says at last, his voice low and breathless.

“I? I did not go anywhere. I have been in my own bed since I bade you good night. Although I have had a dream –”

“I don’t wish to hear it.”

Jonathan is perplexed, at a loss for the source of Childermass’s upheaval of spirits, but wishing to offer some help. He sits on the bare floor next to him and watches as Childermass’s chest stirs with each rough breath. His clothing is all untucked, the cuffs of his breeches unbuttoned so his pale stockingless knees show ungracefully, and Jonathan’s hands shake just a little from a strange impulse to comfort with some touch or other. He might have attempted it were his eye not drawn by the splintered cane at Childermass’s side.

“Come, Childermass. You have broken your stick.”

Childermass offers no reply, but his fingers close on the cane so hard that their knuckles whiten.

“What prompted this? What mischief has it done you?”

“Damn the bloody stick. I won’t speak about it.”

“Then give it to me.”

Childermass looks at him. They are close together, sat as they are almost knee to knee, and Jonathan can see the reflected light of his little candle stub in Childermass’s dark eyes. Then Childermass blinks.

“It’s yours,” he says, and leaves go of the cane. Whereupon without a further word he stands, walks barefoot along the passage and closes himself once more in his bedroom. 

Jonathan is left alone upon the floor with the broken cane. He can hardly begin to understand what has just happened, but to own the truth he is unsettled by it in ways that he might recognise if he were not caught from a dream of his own in the middle of the night. Part of it, to be sure, is his pity and care of Childermass – it is right to admit so much. They are become dear friends. And the pain of a friend is a pain likewise to oneself, and a just and proper object of concern – and yet. Yet his friend is so silent upon these matters as to put a great obstacle in the way of any word or act of comfort. It is simply not to be overcome.

With such thoughts does Jonathan offer comfort to himself, in place of Childermass, and sits engaged in them for several minutes, turning over the little broken off piece of wood in his hand. Then he stands, shivering from the floor, and returns to his room. He stows the broken cane in his own trunk and climbs into bed, where he lies awake for fully two hours.

No word is spoken the following day of Childermass’s outburst, and as much as the memory of its heat and violence is in Jonathan’s mind, he does his best to conduct himself as he might on any day when they have important magic to discover. He sets himself, therefore, to reading the new book and Childermass to writing letters. They take opposite ends of the desk at Childermass’s window, sharing an inkstand, and have breakfast and luncheon brought to them by the servants of the house.

It is close to three o’clock, and Jonathan has been shifting his seat in the corner chair – which is not at all designed for concentrated study – for some long minutes, when he turns a page and a slip of paper falls out of the book.

Childermass looks up from his letter, as Jonathan picks up the paper from the floor and finds it to contain a list of references to other books, to Pale’s _Discourses_ and to –

“Show me that.”

“It must have been left by some previous reader.”

“This is Mr Norrell’s handwriting.”

Jonathan snatches back the paper. “It cannot be –!” Yet if anyone were to know Norrell’s hand at first sight, that man would be Childermass, and indeed now that he examines it more closely, it does quite seem to be that small, precise, most unremarkable handwriting: devoid of both needless flourish and careless drop of ink.

“But if it is so –”

“It is so.”

“Very well. _Since_ it is so, how came this piece of Norrell’s work to be in a book in the Ambrosian Library in Milan?”

“Perhaps it is his book.”

“Had he such a one?”

“If he had I never saw it.”

Jonathan closes the book and looks it over. “And yet I did have that imperfect memory that I told you of in which we had discussed it, Norrell and I – I even recalled the name of the book. Could he have procured it somehow that we read it together? And if it was able to reach us in the darkness, perhaps then this is in point of fact the same book returned once again. Perhaps we may conclude that a thing will pass somewhat freely into and out of the darkness if it is desired strongly enough. Does this seem nonsense, Childermass? I hardly know myself at this point.”

Childermass dips his pen without comment, and makes to resume his letter.

“Yes, yes. You must write at once to your – to Mr Segundus, and tell him of it. It will interest him extremely. Although my mind misgives a little that we may have stolen this book from out of Norrell’s very hands. I had a singular dream last night, and in it I saw Mr Norrell in his library, although his library was not quite as you and I knew it, and he was in a terrible frenzy searching for something amongst the books. Perhaps it was this very _Gatekeeper of Apollo_. Could it indeed be? He was most distressed, and now I think on it, I myself feel rather bad that we may have deprived him.”

“If he was that upset, it’s more likely that it was Mr Segundus’s new copy of Sutton-Grove that he was missing.” 

Jonathan is surprised into laughing a little. “Well. Indeed perhaps you are right. But can we suppose so much –?”

“And since we do have it and like as not it holds our best hope of his return, perhaps you ought to return to your reading, sir.”

~

It is a further two days before they find anything of use. Jonathan has been abroad for the better part of two hours at the Cova Coffee House, and is about to enter his room to lay off his greatcoat, when he is loudly hailed from Childermass’s apartment.

The sun is shining through the window onto the desk, magnifying the gentle heat of the June day, and in its glow Childermass sits, his coat removed, shirtsleeves rolled to the elbow and ink on his fingers up to the knuckle.

“Here,” he says, “a spell of summoning,” and passes the open book to Jonathan, who reads:

_A Nouel Deuise of Magick to summone One which hath Needfvl Jnsight & thvs vnbind what lyes Hydden_

“One which hath needful insight! That could most certainly stand for Gilbert Norrell.”

“Ay.” Childermass gives the briefest laugh imaginable. “Though you would not have said so once.”

“Perhaps not, although to quibble with the point seems a little uncharitable to us both, Childermass. Let us try this spell.”

The spell requires an egg, a pipkin of new milk and a knotted ribbon, all of which Childermass undertakes to get of the housemaid. When he returns from ordering the items, an enlivening discussion follows concerning who should perform the magic, in which Jonathan finds his interest as much in seeing Childermass undertake it as in trying it out himself, and in which Childermass’s main contribution is the stolid assertion that, “You should do it.” And so it falls out.

“Very well, Childermass, I shall try the spell, though I think you should have quite as much facility with historical spells as I.”

Even so, when the housemaid returns with the egg, milk and ribbon, and with a tisane of fennel – also desired by Childermass, against the spell succeeding and Norrell, returned on a sudden from the darkness, needing something to settle his stomach – Jonathan is rather pleased than otherwise to perform it, and his mind turns unexpectedly to Arabella, for whom he would at one time display his feats of magic as a peacock might his splendid tail fan.

All is done carefully and according to Goubert’s text – the egg and milk placed into a wooden bowl, the knotted ribbon held in tight in his left hand – and as the power of the spell takes effect, the apartment is affected by a great sucking out of air that buffets and tugs at Jonathan’s insides. He winks open one eye to see how it affects Childermass, standing at his side, and spies him clutching at the desk and blinking rather rapidly at the floor.

After some moments the upheaval of air subsides, and for a while they both stare, sharing what seems a disappointment that Gilbert Norrell has not appeared on the instant to rail at them. Jonathan inspects the contents of the bowl, where the egg has cracked into the milk, and of his hand, where the knot has loosed itself.

“Well something has most certainly happened,” Jonathan says.

Childermass drops back into the chair, and pulls the book towards him. “But it did not work, so we must keep on.”

Jonathan sighs. “Assuredly we must, but perhaps not this instant. You have been studying that book for a day and a half, I am persuaded, without pause. I am not even convinced you went to bed last evening. Come, let us go out of the house at least for a while before beginning again.”

Book-sullen as he is, it is less trouble than Jonathan might have supposed to persuade Childermass, and once he has tidied himself they depart together for the Piazza del Duomo. The shadows are lengthening in the late afternoon, though it is still warm, and they pause outside the house to remark upon the growth of the young ash tree, still ignored by every other person in the street, which now reaches so high that its topmost leaves brush upon the sills of the second floor casements.

“It’s become quite a handsome young tree,” Jonathan says, and feels himself smile broadly when Childermass replies, “Ay, it’s strong enough.” It is a fine day indeed, Norrell or no.

It is that time of the afternoon when the people of Milan most like to go about abroad with little purpose other than to nod and smile and take each other’s arms, and display a fine coat or feathered bonnet; so, as Jonathan and Childermass enter the Piazza, the arcades skirting it seem to shift about with a great colourful flood of people. Jonathan, for his part, would be quite inclined to pass among them with his own companion, nodding and passing the time of day, so little society has he had, but suspects in Childermass a quite different set of impulses and so instead suggests a visit to the cathedral.

“There is a nail of the true cross in the dome, they say, and I understand that Percy Shelley is quite an enthusiast for the marbles. I myself have something of an urge to climb up to the roof. The view is supposed rather splendid. What do you say, Childermass?”

“I say I prefer to have the ground under my feet. You go and have your view; I have some other business.”

“Very well.”

Jonathan watches as Childermass walks away across the sunlit square, unnoticed and unacknowledged by the people he passes, and through the door of a little tobacconist in the opposite arcade. Then he turns and enters the vast cathedral.

The view from the roof is indeed splendid, north across the city’s terracotta roofs and as far as the Alps. From this distance the mountains seem layered all across with snow, and it is hard to reconcile the green meadows they had passed through just a few days ago from Switzerland, Jonathan fretting at first at every loose rock that might jolt Childermass awake and set back his convalescence. 

When he looks back to the square in front of the cathedral, he is surprised to pick out his friend almost immediately, a still point of black propped against a column among the seething mass of colour. From so high up, Childermass’s idleness seems just that, everyone else moving, meeting and parting or winding about one another, and he simply standing. Yet Jonathan knows his stillness for a sort of disguise, even when not employing magic to the purpose: the careless lean and lazy glance that draw no suspicious eye, but permit Childermass to observe everything that passes before him.

Nothing that Jonathan knows of Childermass is purposeless. And yet so many of those purposes are hidden from him. Why is he here? It is true that he seeks the return of his former master, and that Jonathan had put him in the path of the book he has acquired here, but could he not have sent for it from the stiff comforts of Mrs Wilmot’s boarding house in York? It is a comfort and a help to Jonathan to have a companion of such a sort on this journey, but what is it to Childermass? While Jonathan is engaged thus in wondering, the object of his enquiry shifts apart from his column and makes his way towards the cathedral. Jonathan waits until Childermass is almost at the door, before he steps back from the parapet and hurries down the staircase.

When they return to the house, the signora bustles out into the hall with a card for Jonathan on a tarnished silver plate. On the face of the card is written:

_Miss Flora Constance Greysteel  
Palazzo Affanese, Via Meraviglia_

and on the reverse:

_My dear Mr Strange, forgive my card. We should be honoured by a visit tomorrow at five o’clock. Please bring your friend. F.G._

Jonathan is at once quite filled up with surprise and pleasure to find himself discovered – through he knows not in what manner – by his little friend, whom he had not thought to see again. A visit will be just the thing to divert them both.

“Well look at that, Childermass,” he says. “Someone has summoned us for once.”

~

Some consternation follows on the following day regarding dress. Having spent a considerable time poring over his trunk to find his very whitest chemise, and a green vest he had in Newark of Mr Gatcombe, Jonathan feels a little guilty to look on Childermass who stands at half-past four at the door of his room in his ancient black habit.

“I think this will not serve, Mr Strange,” he announces, his face as dour as his coat. “I have not the manners or appearance for an afternoon visit. Not with young ladies of your acquaintance.”

“Nonsense!” He looks Childermass over, and is relieved to note no rents or mends in his stockings. “You look perfectly proper. And besides Miss Greysteel is not a simpering miss to be offended by the slightest misstep.”

Childermass raises an eyebrow. “I did not suggest I would misstep. I step as I choose.”

“And neither did I. Come, we are neither of us courting here; there is little to fear, and much pleasure to hope for from this renewed acquaintance. Let us go, before our nerves overcome us.”

The salon in which the Greysteels receive them is by some degree larger than the space of Jonathan’s and Childermass’s apartments taken as one, hung with hunting tapestries and furnished in a rich green damask, yet its occupants inhabit it as though it were a cosy drawing-room in the counties. When Jonathan and Childermass are presented, the young lady rises abruptly to her feet, a delighted smile upon her face.

“Mr Strange, what a very great pleasure it is to us to see you here in Italy once again.”

“Indeed, indeed.” Dr Greysteel is only a little behind his daughter, his hand extended in a most amiable greeting. “I’m very glad to see you in such good health. We heard altogether too much of that unpleasantness last year.”

“Ah yes. I confess my sudden return was quite a surprise to me, but a most welcome one. As was the receipt of your card yesterday. I little thought to see such good friends again, though I know you both to be great admirers of Italy in all its parts. I do hope your sister is in good health, Dr Greysteel. I had half-expected to see her here with you.”

“My aunt is quite well, thank you.” Miss Greysteel lowers her eyes. “She is married and returned to England.”

“Well well. Married. Married indeed.” The unspoken truth of Flora’s own still unmarried condition is loud within the room. “And to whom is she married, if that is not an impertinent question?”

“To a magician in Hertfordshire.” She waits a little while for Jonathan to make all his various noises of surprise and congratulation, before continuing. “But Mr Strange, I think you must introduce your companion to us.”

“Of course!” Jonathan turns to find Childermass standing a few feet behind him, his hands folded behind his back, for all the world like an obedient butler. “Come forward, Childermass!” he says, quite loudly, to cover his discomfiture. “Dr Greysteel, Miss Greysteel, may I present my friend, John Childermass.”

“Indeed you may,” Dr Greysteel offers his hand with a goodwill that gratifies Jonathan extremely. “How d’ye do, Mr Childermass.”

“How d’ye do.” Hands are duly shaken. “Miss Greysteel.” He nods at her – all quite proper.

They sit on damask-covered sophas and tea is called for. Talk by necessity settles on the smallest topics, while several larger wait on the company’s pleasure, unspoken.

“We met Mr Strange during his stay in Venice last year, Mr Childermass. I am sure he has told you of it.”

“I had heard of it.”

“You must tell us how your own acquaintance came about.” Miss Greysteel hands Childermass a rose-figured cup and saucer that look remarkably delicate in his long hands.

“I used to be servant to Mr Norrell, Mr Strange’s enemy that was.”

“Well, perhaps not quite enemy –” 

Childermass eyes him from the side without turning his head.

“But you are no longer a servant.”

“No, Miss, I am not, nor ever intend to be again, though I may never rise to the part of a gentleman.”

This is absorbed in silence, not unkind as it appears to Jonathan, but such a silence as must greet a truth that seems to some a thing to mourn. Whether it seems so to Childermass is a matter Jonathan does not know. At all events he drinks his tea with a great show of equanimity. Finally Dr Greysteel speaks up.

“A man must pursue the course for which life has best outfitted him, would you not say, Mr Childermass?”

“Ay, sir, I would. My course as I see it is to give aid to the work of the new magicians of England – the farmers and smiths and seamstresses – the tradesmen who are not scholars but use magic to get on. It is my belief they should have the benefit of new guilds and societies, and in time new books of magic for their own use.”

It is a long statement to hear all at once from Childermass, and Jonathan is not immediately ready to answer it. Miss Greysteel, if she shares his surprise at Childermass’s pronouncement, is less taken aback by its substance.

“Then you, too, are a magician?”

Here then is something Jonathan may answer.

“A most proficient one, Miss Greysteel. He has a facility with natural magic that I hardly thought existed until last month.”

Childermass lowers his cup to stare at him. “Mr Strange exaggerates.”

“I assure you, I do not. I saw him recently grow a new branch from on oak chair. It – perhaps it does not sound such a very great miracle, but it was as beautiful a piece of magic as you might ever hope to see. Everyone about was quite as overcome as I was.”

They are all looking at him now, with varying degrees of penetration, and though Jonathan has not the least idea why, he does perceive that a change in the subject of conversation may be necessary to ensure the composure of at least one person in the room. After a sip or two of tea, he ventures forth.

“Tell me, Miss Greysteel, how did you hear of my arriving in Milan? We’ve been so little outside our lodgings, I cannot think we have been spotted.”

Miss Greysteel takes a steady breath, as if in preparation for something rather taxing, places her cup upon the tea table, and folds her hands into her lap. “I had a letter.”

“A letter? A letter from whom?”

“From Mrs Strange.”

“From – from Arabella?” Jonathan puts down his own cup. It rattles a little in the saucer. “How can she – why has she not written instead to me?”

“She has.” Miss Greysteel looks some meaning at her father, who stands up from his chair.

“Do you take a pipe, Mr Childermass?”

“I do.”

“Then let us go about the courtyard. Flora is become quite emphatic about my taking tobacco in the drawing-room.”

Miss Greysteel watches until the door closes behind them, then rises from the sopha and goes to a small writing-desk in the far corner of the room.

“He is a singular person, your friend.”

“Do you find him rough?” Jonathan is a little disappointed in himself to find that he has worried over this.

“No, Mr Strange.” When she turns back, there is a packet in her hand, and a small smile upon her lips. “You forget the condition in which I knew _you_ lately in Venice and Padua. But forgive me, I do not mean to dwell on painful memories. I only mean that I was your friend then as I am now. I try not to care too deeply for nice manners.”

“You have always been the very kindest of friends,” Jonathan says, though his eyes are now all for the paper in her hand. Miss Greysteel gives it to him.

“Mrs Strange writes me very often,” she explains. “Only this time there were two letters, and one was addressed to you. She told me where I might find you, was quite insistent that I do so, and that I give you this.”

The letter is unsealed.

_Mr Jonathan Strange, Corso Venezia, Milan_

_My dearest Jonathan,_

_It will surprise you to hear from me, I am certain, and in such a fashion. Forgive me for using Flora as my messenger – and, Flora, do you forgive me too – but she is become such a dear friend to me, from the moment I returned from that place, and one I trust above all._

_When I discovered that you were once more in England, I was so glad. It has been a hard thing indeed to imagine you lost. I have thought of you very much and of our life before, and prayed for your return. Though we were often apart, it seems to me, we were ever much together in thought and hope. That is a thing greatly to be wished for._

_It is my belief you are looking for me. Jonathan, I do not know if you remember it now, but you bade me once not to mourn or act the widow, but rather to be happy, and that I have been. I am living quietly among friends and have no desire to return to England. Should you wish to visit me, Flora can give you the direction. Though our relation has altered, it should be the dearest pleasure to me to see you again with my own eyes._

_Your loving friend,_

_Arabella_

To know his wife safe and well, as he has seen it in his bowl, and to read her words to him, such as seem to put her voice directly into his ear, are two quite different things, Jonathan discovers. It is some moments before he is able to command himself enough to look up. Miss Greysteel is regarding him with gentle concern.

“Flora, you must tell me where she is.”

Miss Greysteel picks up her teacup once more. “I will, Mr Strange, gladly. But I would ask you to think about it first. Perhaps until tomorrow. I think there is much good you could do in seeing her, but much harm also.”

“Whatever can you mean? What harm? Harm to whom? Is she well?”

“Quite well, Mr Strange – please don’t be alarmed. But I cannot speak of what is her own concern.”

Jonathan is quite at a loss. He looks again at the letter. She is happy, she is amongst friends, she is his wife – what harm could he offer her? Miss Greysteel lays a hand lightly upon his coat sleeve, and it is, in despite of all, a little comforting.

“I will tell you, Mr Strange. Only let it go for tonight. Come, I have a scheme. Father and I are making an outing to La Scala. They are giving Rossini’s _Turk_ again. We should be so pleased if you and your friend would consent to join us.”

Jonathan looks up from the letter then, and sees her again clearly. She has been nothing but the purest help to him, her gentle insight ever his aid.

“Thank you,” he says. “For my own part, I accept with great pleasure.”

~

Childermass declines the opera, which in truth comes as little surprise to Jonathan. He is silent through their return to Corso Venezia, and when Jonathan appears at his door two hours later, he is at the desk once more, deep in the book. Jonathan’s farewell does not merit so much as a turn of the head, but is acknowledged with a grunt and a raised hand.

The evening is pleasantly passed. The Greysteels are charming company, as ever they were, and the opera offers much both on the stage and among the audience, to distract and entertain. Jonathan is quite himself again as the party leaves the hall, and when Miss Greysteel opens a conversation on the relation of music to magic, Jonathan is happily able to advise her.

“Ah yes, music is much known for its effects, particularly upon intelligent creatures, and its conjuration may be used to great purpose, as in the Battle of Newark. Indeed I believe this very subject was examined in a news sheet Childermass had recently of our friend Mr Segundus.”

“I should very much like to read it.”

“Well then, let us fetch it.” Jonathan has become rather expansive in his eagerness. “If you would both accompany me to my lodgings – they are but a minute’s walk – I may procure it for you now.”

The Greysteels consent to the visit, and the walk is accomplished in only ten or twenty more minutes than Jonathan had remembered. When they arrive, Dr Greysteel declares he will stand outside and take a pipe to refresh himself. Against the coolness of the evening and a threatening shower, however, he gives Flora leave to go in with Jonathan and collect the pamphlet.

“You may stand under our little ash tree, Dr Greysteel. In case it begins to rain.”

“I beg your pardon, Strange?” Dr Greysteel looks about himself in some confusion. “Ash tree?”

“Oh. No, quite so. No tree. I was mistaken. Well, Miss Greysteel, shall we –?”

As they enter the house, Jonathan feels himself the subject of a penetrating squint from the Doctor.

“It is rather poor, I am afraid,” he says, as they climb the stairs. “Certainly nothing to your own situation on Via Meraviglia. We had some money to make our journey, but it is rather coming to an end.”

“I am sorry to hear of it.”

“Here we are.”

Jonathan knocks smartly on the door to Childermass’s apartment, and without waiting for an answer, opens it.

“Childermass! Miss Greysteel would like to –”

The room beyond is quite dark. Two little candles gutter upon the desk and drop wax onto a sea of paper. A quill rests in a slack hand, and a sudden flicker of light illuminates the spreading pool of ink that spills from its tip. Childermass raises his head slowly from the cradle of his arms and looks round.

“Mr Strange.” His voice has the thickness of sleep, and there is something unexpectedly open in his expression, though his eyes are quite dark. 

Jonathan, overcome by his mistake, turns back in some haste. “My apologies, Miss Greysteel. I’m afraid we must postpone. I shall be at the Cova at half-past three tomorrow afternoon. If you would care to meet me there, I shall bring the periodical we spoke of.”

For a moment Flora gazes over his shoulder and into the room, a small crease between her brows, then she looks at Jonathan with a bright smile. “Yes. I shall see you tomorrow, Mr Strange. For now good-night.”

“Good-night.”

Jonathan waits until she has begun to go down the stairs again before entering the room and closing the door behind him. There is a scent here that belongs not to an Italian apartment, but to English woodland after a heavy rainfall. It grows stronger as Jonathan walks into the room, reminding him of the drawing-room at Newark, as if Childermass has been performing wild magic in his sleep. The memory of that spell prickles through Jonathan’s stomach, and when he puts a hand out to Childermass’s shoulder his fingertips seem infused with a peculiar sensitivity.

Childermass blinks heavily at him, then seeming to remember what he is about, turns to look at his pages. His body, which had been slackened from sleep, tenses on the instant.

“Devil take it!” He picks up the dropped quill and reaches for a blotter.

When the spill is dried, Childermass’s posture sinks once more, he gives a great sigh and rests his forehead in one open palm.

“Come,” Jonathan says, a great tenderness and pity rising within him. “It is late. Surely you can put off this work until the morning.”

If he had expected an argument upon the point, such does not arrive. Childermass stands slowly from his chair, and as if he were already asleep and utterly unconscious of Jonathan’s presence, removes his coat and shoes and climbs under the blankets. Sleep comes to him almost at once it seems – the coverlet rising and sinking with his slow breaths – and affords Jonathan the opportunity to look at the open book and the many pages of writing upon the desk.

There are courses of magic to divine men’s motives, to cure an ailing of the spirit of unknown cause, to inspire an unwanted relative to quit a man’s house, to double a portion of eau de vie, to remove a charm placed upon a belligerent herd of sheep – a deal of it obscured by the places where the ink has run from Childermass’s pen. Jonathan examines each page and, finding much to merit further study but nothing of application to their current case, collects them together in a tidy bundle, snuffs the candles and leaves Childermass to his rest.

~

The Cova Coffee House has stood on Via Monte Napoleone for a little over a year, but already it has become the height of fashion. On this particular Monday afternoon in late June, Jonathan and his young companion find themselves amongst a deal of company, all brightly bonneted and waistcoated in the very latest styles, talking the loudest Italian Jonathan has ever heard, and waving their limbs about in such a way as to make him feel himself quite the meekest and quietest person in all the world. Indeed such a noise and bustle prevails that, despite the nearness of the tables, it is an apt place for a conversation of the most private sort. So it is that after a quarter-hour spent in ordering a pot of strong coffee, and – on Jonathan’s part – a vast pastry filled to its utmost with almond cream, and in talking largely of the employment of music in documented spells, Jonathan returns to the delicate topic of Arabella’s whereabouts.

Mis Greysteel assents, as she had promised she would, and extracts a slip of paper from her reticule. Jonathan had thought that the address might be contained within another small letter revealing more of Arabella’s mind, but it is not. Instead the simple direction Flora hands to him is in her own handwriting.

_Villa Centofiori, Campiello Minotto, Venice_

The surprise of it is so great that Jonathan brings down his open hand upon the little table with a sharp rap such as to make the tableware jump and clatter. On the next table a conversation pauses, and two startled gentleman both with highly pomaded hair in the Brutus style, look over at them. One lifts a lorgnette most pointedly, but Jonathan is not to be deterred.

“Then she is in Venice! I little thought – but I know this place: it is quite near to where I stayed myself when I was in that city.”

“Yes, I – believe it is.”

There is a little modest reticence in Flora’s speech that prompts Jonathan to look up. “Miss Greysteel, have you visited her there?”

“I have. And I am happy to tell you it is a comfortable house, and Mrs Strange of course a most amiable hostess. My father was greatly pleased to see her so well set up.”

“I am glad to hear it. There is nothing Arabella likes so well as pleasant company. Or at least there was. I –”

“Mr Strange, I must ask you: are you certain that you wish to go to Venice?”

“Why yes, of course. I must! That is to say I wish to. I have travelled from England to see her.”

“And she will be happy to see you, of that I am sure. Much time has passed since you last were together,” Miss Greysteel seems then to struggle a little with herself, clasping and unclasping her little gloved hands, “with all that must bring.”

“My dear friend, please do not distress yourself. I do apprehend your meaning. By my neglect, I have been to Arabella the cause of the most desperate suffering imaginable. I am keenly aware of this, and she herself wrote of our changed relation. But she is my wife.” As he says it, Jonathan feels his heart stir within his breast, a tender ache. “If she still wishes to be my wife in fact, then I must offer myself to her. And if not – I have loved her with all my heart, Miss Greysteel. I must know how she does.”

Miss Greysteel, whose head has been bowed throughout this exposing speech, now looks up, and her gaze, though gentle, is fortified with a new frankness. “She does well, of that I am able to assure you. She wishes only to live as she may, and – do not think this indelicate of me – she does not wish to tie herself where affection is secured elsewhere.”

The ache in Jonathan’s breast ignites painfully.

“No, you mistake. I have – no affections, save that for her.”

“Mr Strange, I hope you will forgive my frankness – it is meant with all care – but I know you. I have known you mad with grief and mad with love and simply mad. You are open, and a person may understand you quite well. I only say this: that you should understand _yourself_ better.”

How is such a thing to be answered? For some moments, Jonathan is at a loss, and merely stares at his half-eaten pastry, as if some irregularity of the digestion is to blame for the pain that grips his insides.

“Mr Strange,” Flora says at last, and the remorse is quite plain in her tone. “I beg your pardon for having spoken in such a way. I do perceive that I have caused you pain.”

“Not at all, Miss Greysteel.” He smiles at her. “Indeed I thank you most sincerely for your friendship which has served my wife and I so well throughout our acquaintance, and for your insight, which has perhaps never been so needful.”

~

Jonathan does not immediately return to the house on Corso Venezia, but walks about the city in a state of some nervous excitement. He has cause to regret the coffee, which, though he had left a deal of it to grow cold within the pot, makes his thoughts leap about in a way that rather disorientates. For some minutes he even believes himself lost in little a knot of streets, before one of them opens out upon the Piazza del Duomo from a direction he has not marked before. Next to him is the little tobacconist that he had watched Childermass go into two days before. On impulse, he enters the shop himself, and after some negotiation with an elderly aproned signore, comes away with a waxed paper packet of fine Orinoco. In light of their dwindling means, it is a hopeless extravagance and one Childermass would hardly permit in his own behalf, but its purchase eases Jonathan’s spirits a little and he smiles to feel it in his pocket.

It is not so fine a day as when they came here before, but Jonathan climbs once more to the roof of the cathedral. The Alps are covered with cloud this evening, the colours in the square below lack brightness, and there is little to draw the eye. He thinks of how he had spied upon Childermass from his perch here, and learnt nothing from the observation. It was a little like seeing Arabella in the brass bowl, wholly herself and yet mute and frustratingly remote from him. Such comparisons produce a queer new swell of anxiousness within him, and after a minute or two of unhelpful reflection, during which the feeling merely deepens and extends until his very fingertips seem to itch by his sides, Jonathan climbs down the stairs from the roof and sets himself upon the path home.

“Childermass, I do believe something is nesting in our ash tree!” he says as he enters Childermass’s apartment, his peculiar mood quite forgotten. He has procured two ancient bottles of barrique from the landlady, and sets them upon the floor by the bed before coming to the window to see if it offers a better prospect of the nest.

Childermass stands from his chair and looks out. “It’s not the season for nesting.”

“Indeed it is not, but so you see.” 

The nest is only a scant inch or two below the casement, a small brown sparrow twitching nervously upon its edge, and three small grey speckled eggs within. It seems a little miracle, but Childermass spares it only a moment or two before returning to his papers upon the desk. At some time during the afternoon, he has looked at his cards and now has left them scattered over the table in a manner quite uncharacteristic.

“You have found her, then,” he says, not sparing a glance at Jonathan.

“She is in Venice. We might be there in two days.”

Childermass’s pen halts upon his paper, but still he does not look up from Goubert.

“I think you must leave off studying that book. You are not long over your illness and I fear it is overtiring you. Last night I had almost to order you to bed before you spoilt the book with spilt ink.”

“I cannot leave off.”

“Why what do you mean?” Jonathan approaches and sits on the edge of the bed. He watches Childermass rub a hand across his eyes. It is a gesture that seems to have as much in it of moroseness as of bodily fatigue. At last the pen is laid to one side, and Childermass turns to look at him.

“I mean that we must find the answer. We summoned help and it did not bring Mr Norrell.”

“No, but that does not mean it was entirely ineffective. You feel his absence keenly, I know, but –” 

“That is not the point, sir.”

“Then I do not understand you at all, Childermass. Pray, enlighten me.”

“English magic. That is the point. It needs either both of you or neither of you. You have been brought back and he has not.”

“And it shall have us both once more when we have found the way.”

Childermass takes a great breath, and as he releases it his shoulders sink under its weight. “I promised once to take up your cause against Mr Norrell, if you were not able, and to do the same for him.”

“But, Childermass, consider: we are not so opposed as once we were.”

“That may be true while you are both at work together, and you may balance each other naturally. When one of you is gone and the other grows in power, I must become a counterweight, as I once promised, or English magic may tip over and work itself into a chaos.”

“And this you truly believe?”

“I do. Without Mr Norrell, we are in as bad a state as when there was only him.”

“But this is the greatest nonsense. I am not about to overturn the peace of English magic. I am more like to overturn that desk you write upon to put a stop to this mania for study.”

“You studied yourself into madness once. I do not believe you are in position to speak to me of it.”

“But that was to recover a _wife_! I cannot believe that you long for Mr Norrell in such a way.”

Childermass’s hand curls into a tight grip upon itself in his lap, then uncurls once more. “I do not.”

“Well then, I say again I do not understand you.”

Then there seems nothing to say upon the matter. As if to put a full point on the subject, Childermass turns back to the desk, takes up his quill and dips it once more into the inkpot. Jonathan watches him scratch out another handful of lines in silence, before he speaks up again.

“Will you finish the journey with me, at all events?”

“I will go with you to Venice, but if we cannot find a way, then I must leave you with your wife and make my own way. I think you should be happy enough.”

“Oh indeed.” Jonathan is startled at how cross he is become. “Happy enough.”

A stretch of time passes that seems to him several minutes – and during which Childermass fills a further page and a half with his notes and Jonathan feels rather vexed and at a loss – before he recalls the packet of tobacco and the grappa.

These Childermass is prevailed upon to share, whether in a spirit of celebration or as a species of farewell, Jonathan is at first not sure, but he produces from his trunk a pair of grubby-looking rummers Jonathan had not seen before, and such as might have been pilfered from the Black Swan at Peasholme. They prove more than apt to the purpose.

“At all events,” he says, somewhere in his second glass of grappa, “I would not be at odds with you, Childermass. We two fit together in a fashion I never could achieve with Norrell, nor do I imagine did you. I believe there is more to be gained from our closeness than from our distance.”

Childermass looks at him seriously. One arm is slung across the back of his chair, his fingers in a loose grip around his glass. “Pass over the bottle,” he says, and upon Jonathan so doing, pours himself a measure rather large than otherwise, takes it in one swallow and pours another, then sets it on the table and takes out his pipe.

It is a procedure Jonathan has become familiar with, the pressing in of the leaf with one long slim finger, the sucking in of the candle flame – once, twice, and a marvel that no wax drops into the bowl – then the moment when Childermass seems to loosen and stretch as the smell of the tobacco spills out around him. Jonathan recalls again the morning he awoke to find his face buried in Childermass’s hair and the thick sweet shadow of that smell, his body most peculiarly comforted and heated by the proximity of his friend’s. It is a thing he has not permitted himself to dwell upon more than can be avoided, and the memory of it now, as Childermass’s eyes close and he props his long legs on the desk before him, seems altogether transgressive. Jonathan begins on the second bottle of grappa.

After some glasses further, when it is very much too late to apply to the landlady for a new bottle, Jonathan insists that they should attempt Goubert’s eau de vie spell.

“We might as well find some use in this blasted book.”

Childermass laughs, quite taking Jonathan by surprise. “You will be drunk as a wheelbarrow.”

“Then I declare it a cause most honourable!”

Childermass performs the spell, which requires only a quantity of warmed brandy and twice that of well water, for which they take the contents of Childermass’s wash pitcher. The result is rather browner in colour than the rich tourmaline warranted in Goubert, and barely palatable in Jonathan’s opinion, hardly Childermass’s prettiest work. He falls to a fit of coughing at the first mouthful, and pulls at his collar as the brandy sears its way through his chest.

“Perhaps –” he forces out, interrupted by a cough, but rather inclined to a gentle sort of tact, “it can be accounted to the primitive forms of distillation in use formerly.”

“Perhaps.” Childermass says, swallowing down his own glass with barely a wince. “Or perhaps you are a pampered babe who cannot stomach anything but the weakest water.”

Jonathan laughs, filled with unaccountable pleasure at this teasing. “I think that hardly fair! I have been greatly respected in my time for my fortitude in the face of a jug of sack.”

“When I am in England again,” Childermass says, and a little pang cuts through Jonathan’s good humour to hear him speak of it, “I shall make my own spell, and it will be for the doubling of good ale, not of gentlemen’s brandy.”

“And the Gatcombes and Tantonies shall despise you, and the men of the north shall make you their new king. Now, since I am not made of such strong stuff as you and your countrymen, and cannot drink your fine new liquor, perhaps you might lend me your pipe.”

A pipe is a thing he had cultivated at a time when he had supposed himself destined for industry and that suchlike manly habits most became stout fellows like himself. Before long, however his enthusiasm for that life had waned, and besides pipe-smoking was a thing quite despised by the longed-for Miss Woodhope, and so he had given it up without regret. Now he finds the thought rather attractive, and though his fingers do not quite move in concert with one another and Childermass must light the pipe for him, he welcomes the sweet haze that smothers both within and without.

At length, however, Jonathan finds himself growing heavy with sleep, and their conversation halted, and he cannot in all conscience conceive a pretext upon which he might stay longer.

“Well I am for bed,” he says, and after a moment Childermass opens his own eyes to look at him from the chair by the desk.

“Ay.”

So Jonathan takes a candle from the desk and departs.

Jonathan’s apartment is rather smaller than the one Childermass occupies, with only a tiny casement and a bed altogether less commodious in every respect. It has, however, a large dressing mirror set upon a console table with his washing water, and when Jonathan has removed his coat and laid it upon the bedroom chair, he looks at himself in the glass. He has gained a little colour and flesh since his return from the darkness, and his eyes, though heavy-lidded, are bright once more. He wonders what Arabella will see in his eyes when they meet, though by God’s mercy she had not known him when the madness had stripped all reason and health from him. Might he climb into this very mirror and walk the King’s Roads to Venice? He puts a hand out towards the mirror – and indeed it does darken and bow inward a little at the tips of his fingers – then thinks better of the experiment. It is after all perhaps ill-advised to arrive unexpected and in the dead of night.

Instead he sets about the business of undressing, thinking himself very much the most reasonable of all men, until he encounters an obstacle. Somehow Jonathan has contrived in the course of the evening to tighten his neckcloth to a point of such elemental knottedness that no thumb can enter into it. It is quite immovable, and he fumbles at it, therefore, for no longer than a half-minute before seeking help.

“Damn this knot!” he says, by way of excusing his return, and finds Childermass seated upon the damask quilt, having managed to remove waistcoat and neckcloth both, his shirt open at the collar. He looks at Jonathan with dark-lashed eyes, belike three-quarters of the way to sleep.

“Childermass, could you –? This blasted thing.”

“You told me once before not to behave as if I were your servant.”

“Well, then. Behave as if you were a person with an ounce of human pity and help me with this cursed knot.”

Childermass blinks slowly and stands. Jonathan is at a loss to understand how a man can stand so gracefully after a bottle and a half of grappa, and perceives somewhat distantly that this may be something wholly ill-advised. His heart gives a little hiccough as Childermass approaches.

“I am _not_ your servant,” Childermass says, but reaches out for the neckcloth anyway.

It gives after a few judicious tugs, and as Childermass slides it free of the collar, Jonathan finds his breath coming as if past some blockage or constriction, a little noisy it seems to him and full of effort.

“Your shirt,” Childermass says.

“Yes. The shirt. Please –” Childermass has advanced the tip of one thumb under the opening of his shirt, and Jonathan finds his breathing stopped up altogether, “– my shirt,” he finishes.

The look in Childermass’s eyes is become a dark and heavy question, one that seems to prompt an answer Jonathan had not expected to give. He swallows, and speaks almost without thinking.

“You may –” he says, and knows that he neither means, nor does Childermass understand, any thing that has to do with a servant discharging a duty or a friend performing a simple service for another friend. It is sufficient answer, however, for Childermass leans forward and kisses him.

It is a shock and yet at the same time no shock at all, though Jonathan’s heart seems to crack open at the suddenness of it and a flood of hot sentiment issues from the breach. Childermass’s lips press carefully against Jonathan’s mouth, and his thumb lies gentle upon the skin beneath Jonathan’s collarbone, but his other hand holds so tight to Jonathan’s shoulder that the urging for more cannot be mistook.

Childermass pulls back before that urging can be acted upon, and it is a moment or two before Jonathan can open his eyes. When he does, it is to find Childermass gazing fixedly at his mouth and breathing quick and heavy, and Jonathan, though he has barely begun to look upon this new thing, is so full of the heat and anxiety of it that he can hardly bear to keep up the looking, but instead hooks a hand at the nape of Childermass’s neck and pulls him close to kiss again.

This time Childermass grunts into the kiss, one arm going easily about Jonathan’s body to press them together, the other leaving his shirt at last to travel precipitately downwards to the falls of Jonathan’s breeches and nudge at the stiffening prick behind them.

“You should get undressed,” he says, his mouth resting upon Jonathan’s.

“Yes. You –” replies Jonathan, quite stupidly.

It is something to marvel at how easily Childermass can remove a man’s clothing. A terrible and unexpected shyness comes upon Jonathan when Childermass pulls his shirt from his arms and drops it upon the floor. His hands go by instinct across his body, so that Childermass has to unpeel them and place them back at his own waist, and the sparking in his dark eyes as he looks at Jonathan’s nakedness is that of a shameless zealot; it brings a lustful heat out upon Jonathan’s skin and an ache to his prick. They kiss again, breath shortening, and this time Childermass’s fingers stay upon the fastenings of Jonathan’s breeches, and begin to unbutton them.

At the first touch of those fingers between his legs, the feeling of his prick taken in a confident grasp, Jonathan finds he must break from the kiss to gulp at the empty air. Childermass nudges down Jonathan’s cheek, the short hairs of his beard scratching, and opens his mouth upon Jonathan’s jaw.

“This is what you want?”

A breath taken. “Yes –” and though Jonathan’s mouth is most obscenely wet and hot, the answer must squeeze its way out of a dry throat, so much the product of will that Jonathan is helpless to deny it.

“Touch me, then.”

The request, once given, strikes Jonathan as the very thing he wants most, more even than that blessed hand about him, squeezing and stroking. He pulls the shirt ends from Childermass’s breeches and pushes his hands up the spare warm stomach underneath, feels it shudder underneath his touch. There is a small noise, like a stifled gasp of pain, and Childermass’s hand falters for a moment on Jonathan’s prick, then there is his body pressed shoulder to thigh against Jonathan’s, trapping Jonathan’s hands, so he must slide them about and up Childermass’s back until one is at his neck, snagging into his tangled hair, the other at the hollow of his back, two fingers tucked just into the waist of his breeches. Childermass’s own hard cock presses at Jonathan’s hip.

“This is –” Jonathan says, but for once cannot think of the word. Something hot and frantic is rising within him. “I – I think about the branch you made grow out of that chair,” he rushes out, his voice full of a heavy desperation. Childermass brings a hand up to his mouth perhaps meaning to cover it, but managing only to press the heel of his palm to Jonathan’s lower lip. “It was so beautiful. I wanted to –” his lips brush against the skin of Childermass’s hand. “I wanted to touch you.”

“Shut up!”

“I wanted to – like this – like you are touching me. Would you have permitted it?”

Childermass kisses him then with a sort of glorious urgency, twists his tongue into Jonathan’s mouth so that words and reflection are alike abandoned, and suddenly it becomes very much too much, the heat and pressure overwhelming, and Jonathan spends into Childermass’s hand, a piercing and long-drawn orgasm that he pants out against his friend’s mouth.

It is not a thing to be quickly recovered from, and for long moments Jonathan clings to Childermass, his hands grimly twisted in whatever parts of his friend’s clothing have presented themselves for the purpose. Indeed when his mind is finally sufficiently cleared to look up, Jonathan is dismayed to find he has torn one shirt sleeve quite away from its seam.

“Oh! I am –” 

“It doesn’t matter.” 

Childermass, for his part, continues to cling quite as keenly, and when he has wiped off his hand upon the ruined shirt, sets it to combing and twisting through Jonathan’s hair, as if to soothe some profound upset. It is a studied gentleness of which one who knows him but little might hardly have believed him capable. Jonathan is not such a one, though he might himself wonder at such a degree of patient forbearance when he can still feel quite well Childermass’s prick against him, hard and unrelieved.

“You must let me,” Jonathan says. 

His face is held tight against the damp warmth of Childermass’s neck, but he makes room between their bodies to slide his hands downwards, lift away the shirt and feel for the fastenings of Childermass’s breeches. A breath shivers against his skin, and that is all the permission that is forthcoming, but it suffices to begin the business of unbuttoning and pulling down Childermass’s clothing, until at last he has his prick in hand. It is quite a new business for Jonathan this one of touching the hidden parts of other men, but it produces such an exquisite shuddering in his friend and answering ache in himself that Jonathan cannot regret either the lack of having tried such a thing before nor his discovery of this new pleasure now. It seems of all things the most natural, and he is quite caught up in the particular fit of Childermass’s prick in his hand, its thickness and its unimpeachable hardness, that he is barely aware of being gently shouldered towards the bed until he stumbles at its edge and falls backward upon the counterpane.

He reaches up, but Childermass, far from moving into his arms, remains gazing down at him with a most serious expression.

“I want to do something,” he says. It sounds so wondrously grave that Jonathan’s hopeful reach falters, imagining all things. Childermass’s eyebrows rise. “No, I don’t mean that. Something easier.”

The truth is that Jonathan’s qualm was not precisely one of fear but perhaps a sort of surprise. He reflects upon it, the idea of the very furthest thing they might do together, and finds his blood begin to run hot once more.

“Then do it, whatever it is. I want it too.”

Childermass leans down to kiss him, and with one arm threaded beneath the small of his back, attempts to shift him further onto the bed. Jonathan finds he must assist, and while he is shuffling upon the counterpane, Childermass steps out of his breeches and pulls his shirt over his head. His body has a northern pallor, a slim muscularity that speaks to hard work and a lack of physical indulgence. Here and there dark hair shadows it, and knots of scarring stand out pink and stretched, making the smoother expanses of skin by contrast appear milky and perplexingly tender. Jonathan gapes at his friend’s uncovered body, and as Childermass makes to lie upon him, the heat rises to his face, and his prick, still damp and soft from climax, twitches once more against his thigh. More by instinct than design, Jonathan finds his legs slipping apart to make space. 

“Keep them together,” Childermass says, nudging at his knee. “Keep them closed.”

So saying, he shifts himself so that he is kneeling over Jonathan’s hips, then spits into his own palm, wets his cock with it, and lowers himself, straightening, pinning Jonathan’s thighs between his own.

“Like this,” he says, and pushes his prick just a little between Jonathan’s legs, tight up against his balls and nudging against the space behind. They are so close together that Jonathan can see a little of himself reflected in the darkness of Childermass’s eyes, which look upon him in mute appeal and a palpable sort of hunger.

For all Childermass’s assurance, it is the very brother act of sodomy, so dumbly arousing and so new that Jonathan does not know how to voice his assent except with a kiss that turns swiftly into something much less precise than that, violently urging. Between his legs, Childermass’s prick convulses, hardening still further, tugging a little at his balls, and Childermass grunts and thrusts forward. For the sake of the act itself, Jonathan has to subdue the instinct to spread his legs into an embrace and instead uses his hands to clutch and pull at whatever of his friend’s body can be reached – his arms, his arse, his hair, loosened now and stroking against Jonathan’s face and neck as he moves. Jonathan’s prick is hard again between them, worked by the shifting press of Childermass’s belly until he feels he might spend a second time, then suddenly Childermass gives a stifled curse and stills.

There is silence for a moment or two, into which intrude only the sounds of their hard breaths, and the beat of Jonathan’s driving pulse in his own ears. His cock twitches in frustration and Childermass, feeling it no doubt, sucks in a noisy breath, lowers his head and grips at Jonathan’s arms.

“What is it?”

“I do not want to finish.”

Jonathan laughs, helpless to hold it back and filled with an abrupt confidence. “We’ll do it again. What is to stop us?”

Childermass lifts his face just enough that he can stare down. His eyelids flutter a little as if in further momentary resistance, then without warning he thrusts hard between Jonathan’s legs, a second time, a third, restraint given over. His mouth is upon Jonathan’s when he finishes, wide with his stuttering breaths, one hand tugging at Jonathan’s hair. Jonathan is so close to his own climax that it takes no more than a clumsy hand upon him to draw out the sharp ache and make him spend again, wracked with it while it lasts, then dropping headlong into a weary contentment.

After some minutes tangled together, Childermass rises from the bed to fetch his torn shirt, with which they clean themselves, quite unsatisfactorily. It occurs to Jonathan to wonder whether he ought to remove himself to his own bed then, but Childermass has lain down behind him, and a heavy arm upon his side proves ample dissuasion. The feeling of bare flesh against parts of himself that have so long existed without contact is so sweetly addicting that for several minutes Jonathan cannot forbear shifting his legs against Childermass’s, petting his encircling arm. He tries to stay awake, to concentrate on the slow breaths stirring at the nape of his neck, but his is too drowsy with alcohol and satiation. The pull of sleep grows more insistent and at last he drifts away into a slumber where there is no dream of darkness and no one calls out to him.


	6. Chapter 6

Early the following morning Jonathan is assailed by a long-buried memory of Charlotte-square, where painful consciousness had once returned to him in a soft bed not his own, a heavy counterpane upon his chest. A pale yellow light had penetrated a curtained window and a persistent squeaking sounded in either ear. He had on that occasion – as Georgiana later explained over a plain soup brought to him in that same bed – tumbled from a horse of his uncle’s, and taken a crack to the head upon the street. The current sensation is not dissimilar, though the squeaking arises not in his own poor head this time but rather from just beyond the curtain, where a small bird is voicing a rather violent complaint, the like of which Jonathan might himself articulate had he the means. He wishes briefly for a plain soup and some comforting womanly words, then a forgotten hand creeps about his middle and a warm body heaves against him, and all such woeful thoughts evaporate in a pleasant sort of drifting that leads inevitably into a second bout of slumber.

Someone is speaking in low tones at the door when he wakes a second time. The bodily discomfort persists, and he must endure it carefully for the several moments it takes for his position to become clear. It is Childermass’s counterpane, his bed, his embrace in the early morning and his voice now at the door. Jonathan experiences a queasy on-rushing of memory, and with it some emotion that makes the ache in his head briefly worse.

He turns to look just as Childermass is closing the door, and for a moment the look is returned with some sternness. Childermass is already fully clothed, which makes Jonathan’s position yet clearer, and brings into a sudden and penetrating light several difficulties which must at once be got over.

Before he has been able to marshal an opening to conversation, however, Childermass moves to that infernal desk and there he sits, tidily and in nothing like the manner of last night, and draws out a piece of paper upon which, as is ever his habit, he starts up a letter.

“The girl is bringing up breakfast,” he says, as the pen begins its scratching.

Jonathan moans into the bolster. “Oh, do tell her not to.”

“It’s best you eat. We have a place on the stage at ten.”

“Do we?”

“We’ll take a room in Padua and you’ll be on to Venice tomorrow.”

There is a curious sort of anguish at hearing Childermass speak so easily, when Jonathan himself is quite unable. A terrible recollection occurs then of having last night promised – and largely perhaps to himself – the opportunity of repeating their intimacy. How foolish, and how unfathomably remote that now appears. With such thoughts Jonathan occupies himself while Childermass writes, and meanwhile twists himself among sheets that seem from some great malice to wrap around his limbs until he is quite trapped and perspiring in the growing warmth of the day. A godforsaken day it truly is.

When the girl arrives with a tray of toasted biscuits and some soft cheese, Jonathan returns somewhat to himself, masters a small “Grazie” despite his lack of appetite, and wonders what the talk will be in the kitchen. Perhaps it is the very last thing that should occupy his thoughts. Childermass, for his part, seems entirely unconcerned, has folded and sealed his letter, set it upon Goubert’s volume and begun to wrap both in a large cloth. To Jonathan it seems to set a full point upon their endeavour. It must be now time to speak, and so he applies his will.

“Childermass,” he says at last. “Please, I find I must apologise. My conduct towards you has been unconscionable. I have trespassed where I should least of all have trespassed. I have taken unforgiveable advantage –”

“You’ve taken –?”

“What I mean to say is that I am sorry, Childermass.”

“ _Are_ you sorry?”

That he might not be sorry, or should not at least attempt to be so is a thing which had not occurred to Jonathan. And in the instant that it now does, several other things also pass through his mind. It is true that among them is a memory of Arabella breakfasting in a dressing-gown, her hair in a thick braid and her face sweetly but firmly disapproving, but also – and perhaps terribly – there is Childermass laundering a pair of stockings, and packing a pipe with cheap tobacco, and making an entire salon throb with magic, and regarding him now in this room with an expression somewhat hard, as though he believes Jonathan incapable of supplying the right answer.

“No.” Jonathan passes a hand over his forehead. “No, i fear you are correct – I am not precisely sorry. Although –”

“Then you should not say so. And I certainly should not wish it neither. We are neither of us such blushing maidens to be worrying over modesty.” The packet is finished and briskly tied, and now Childermass is engaged in writing a new note. It is surely to be wondered at whether he will ever run dry of people to communicate with. “And I would not look to place myself between a man and his wife.”

“No.” Jonathan, who had fallen to inspecting one of his breakfast biscuits, now puts it down upon the tray, feeling in all ways rather abject. “Of course you would not.”

Childermass holds the note up between fore- and middle finger. “And if you will get up out of that bed, I will give this direction to the Signora and pack our clothes for the stage.”

“Then you do mean to continue the journey with me?"

“I said so.”

That he will only accompany Jonathan as far as Padua is not again spoken; indeed there is no need, for the situation is by now well understood by both. When Childermass puts on his coat, Jonathan may not reach out a hand to smooth its sleeve nor re-tuck its collar, and so he does not. 

The journey to Padua, though as swift as may be hoped, is both long and solemn. The four other souls sharing the coach with Jonathan and Childermass contribute likewise little to the company’s spirits. The largest of the travellers is a corpulent Austrian notary who spends almost the whole day asleep, while his wife, tucked into the minute space beside him notwithstanding an enormous bonnet, stares at Childermass with gimlet eyes from Brescia to Vicenza. The other two are a young girl and her governess, neither of whom will meet the eye of any other person in the carriage, and who seem, from their rapid and dolorous Italian, to fear a thrown wheel at every jolt and pothole in the road. One sudden lurch wakes the notary just long enough to tut most feelingly at their exclamations.

It is near midnight when the travellers arrive in Padua, and the inn they settle upon has only one room to offer. Jonathan is by this time perhaps a little too fatigued and dispirited to feel acutely any discomfort or pain in the sharing of the room. Still the arrival of a mail coach, which had followed hard upon them all the way from Milan, and the delivery into their hands of a letter from a now quite regular correspondent, duly redirected by the Signora, provides some relief from what awkwardness remains. The letter is addressed to them both, a thing that Jonathan remarks upon and then wonders over in something like embarrassment. Childermass, however, engaged upon a frank accounting of their remaining funds, merely bids him read it aloud.

“ _My dear Childermass and Strange_ – so it begins, as I have said –

“ _I hope this letter finds you_ – etcetera etcetera – _It is now one week since the last meeting of the York Society of Magicians, at which matters proceeded in a quite unlooked-for manner. At the meeting was Miss Redruth, whom, Childermass, you may remember as the lady in the rather handsome scarlet gown_ – I had no idea you maintained an interest in such things, Childermass.”

“I do not. Read the letter.”

“Very well – _the rather handsome scarlet gown. And she had with her two articles, which will interest you extremely. The first was a personage, to whit the scoundrel Vinculus, whom she had met some days earlier drawing in trade in his little yellow tent in High Harrogate. You will be quite as vexed as I was to hear of it, and I may assure you that I made him feel every particular of that vexation, which he received in the meekest manner possible. Indeed in company with Miss Redruth, he seemed rather tamed, and ready to make himself quite agreeable to her at the least. And that lady, whom Vinculus had acquainted with our project, had some rather startling ideas of her own concerning some aspects of the new English magic and its congruence with our Book. Both of these circumstances I perceived at once might be worked to our advantage, and though Vinculus was returned to my care, I prevailed upon Miss Redruth to join us at Starecross on the afternoon following, when we might speak at greater length about the Book and all such matters, while at once ensuring Vinculus's happy compliance with our endeavours._

“Well well. I had not suspected such a capacity for cunning in Mr Segundus, had you, Childermass?”

Childermass is still engaged in writing to himself a note of some account or other, but there is a dry little smile upon his face.

“Well. Now I see that you had!”

“Never mind about that. What was the second article?”

“Ah yes. There follows a description of the meal the Society took. It was some sort of braised mutton not to Segundus's taste. Where should it be... ah!

“ _As to the other item Miss Redruth had brought with her, and which she produced at the close of the dinner, you must prepare yourself for a shock, Mr Strange, for it was –_ ”

But Jonathan has not prepared for the shock, and it is perhaps the long pause in speaking that follows which at last provokes Childermass to look up. “It was what?”

“It was my book.”

The letter is pulled from his hand, and for the first few moments read in silence. Jonathan had thought little of his book beyond a chilling fury at its loss, but he remembers now his first touch of the smooth cream-coloured pages and green canvas boards, that story of new-old magic he’d laboured over and set down so carefully.

Childermass is standing a little apart from him, still reading the letter.

“It is the same book? The same –?”

Childermass offers no reply, but reads one side of the letter and then the other, evincing not a single reaction apart from a deepening frown, then hands it back to Jonathan, who resumes.

_There followed upon the general astonishment at this discovery, as well as the great interest of the company in a volume which recently had been at the centre of such a scandal, several other accounts by those present of other books recovered. Some of these had appeared quite suddenly in our members’ own households; others stumbled upon by chance in shops or refreshment rooms; one a copy of Lanchester discovered at the bottom of a crate of vegetables delivered to Mr Thorpe’s housekeeper, another an unknown work of Watershippe upon which Mr Armstrong had rested his foot as he sat to catch his breath upon a seat in Grape Lane opposite the Barley Hall._

_I was at once quite avid to secure all the books for the library at Starecross, where they might be carefully conserved for the use of our scholars as well as any of the Yorkshire Magicians who might from time to time wish to consult them. Squire Lambert put forward the most sensible suggestion that we might engage some few copyists against the possibility that the volumes may be lost again at any moment; Miss Hogg insisted that such duplications might be managed by magic. Many opposing plans were at once put forward -- by the younger members of the Society, that is; Dr Foxcastle, Mr Taylor and Mr Hunt or Hart, whichever it may be, making clear the impropriety of such extreme enthusiasms by reserving their remarks for the suet pudding. I myself took no part in the quarrelling, intent as I was upon obtaining Miss Redruth’s undertaking that I might finally read and be entrusted with the custodianship of Mr Strange’s book, until a late arrival and a loud shout brought all conversation to a halt, with news that at first I regretted most deeply.-- Jonathan Strange has returned!-- was that shout, and quite a clattering of spoons followed upon it, I may tell you._

Jonathan looks up to see Childermass sitting upon a small chair at the dressing table. He has drawn his cards from his pocket, but is not yet about the business of laying them out, but rather regarding Jonathan with a dark look. Such a quantity of thoughts at once clamour in Jonathan to be voiced, not least that the necessity of maintaining concealment is now over for good or ill, that one way or another he must be found out and returned to his life or to such punishment as –

Childermass interrupts all such reflections. “Finish the letter.”

_The bearer of these tidings was a young blacksmith by the name of Proby, hardly tolerated by some of the Society elders and at first scarcely believed. His news, however, came by way of a groom to a lady of some quality from Nottinghamshire, whose carriage horse Proby had chanced to re-shoe on a journey to Northumberland. This lady was known to Mr Aptree himself as it fell out, though I now forget her name, and had seen Mr Strange with her own eyes in a drawing room in Newark, not performing magic by his own hand to be sure, but in the company of another very great magician “of noble and discreet bearing”, as the lady said. Here she can only have intended Childermass, though I must concede that no one present, excepting myself and Vinculus, who laughed rather loudly, recognised the portrait._

_I was at first greatly apprehensive that the talk would at once be of apprehending Mr Strange and undertaking unpleasant enquiries, but apart from the quite apparent displeasure of Dr Foxcastle, the news was greeted with equanimity in some, and by a marked excitement in others. Miss Redruth herself, who had stood up, the better to engage in a disagreement with Mr Taylor, had at once to sit down again upon a chair. I assisted by taking Mr Strange’s book from her, in order that she not be too encumbered, though that is not immediately to the purpose._

_And so it seems that the world is quite changed. There is everywhere to be found a great and lively interest in the new magic, while the appetite for old rivalries is quite forgot. Indeed, with no Henry Lascelles to poison the imagination, the talk prior to this irruption had not been of Norrell and Strange for some little while. It seemed to me then, and does still – the which I hope will give no pang – a cause rather for rejoicing than regret, and leaves the way quite open for Mr Strange’s return to us, whether or not Mr Norrell is to be recovered._

_I must now break off and send this to meet the post, for Miss Redruth is due upon the instant, and Vinculus has demanded a jug of water, quite to what purpose I am at a loss, but I am not minded to discourage any small gesture towards hygiene. So I must summon Mrs Caddy to see to it before this new enthusiasm suffers any setback._

_I will finish by expressing the hope that you find Mrs Strange well, and that I may see you both in Yorkshire as soon as your work will allow._

_I remain your friend,_

_J R Segundus_

A little supper is served in the parlour at the inn. There are no others at this hour excepting the young lady and her governess, with whom Jonathan and Childermass had shared the coach from Milan. Both ladies appear done in and disinclined to conversation, and a somewhat dense silence hangs upon the room. Childermass’s eyes are fixed for the most part upon his dinner plate, and when Jonathan hails him, his look is openly morose, quite at odds with the firm straightforward countenance of the morning.

“It is a great thing, is it not,” Jonathan says, “to think I may be able to return home and continue my work. That there is no longer a need for concealment.”

“Concealment does not suit you.”

Jonathan gives a short laugh, but it is not a match for the mood in the parlour, and the young lady at the next table startles. “Indeed it does not. I confess I am quite ready to take up my life again.”

“I hope that Mrs Strange feels the same.”

An objection is ready upon Jonathan’s tongue on the instant, a picture that has begun to push itself forward of a quite different life, but a sort of compassion for them both prevents him from voicing it. They stare at each other for a long moment, before Childermass’s chin lifts and a weary smile appears. His eyes are gentle upon Jonathan, perhaps gentler than he deserves, as if he can perceive Jonathan’s desire to kiss him, to touch the hair that hangs at his cheek, and forgives it.

“I have been out of my senses for quite two and a half years, Childermass, since Arabella was taken away from England. I have only just begun to feel that madness leave me. To be mad is a terrible sort of freedom; it makes any thing in the world appear possible, and that all civilised regard may be sacrificed to that thing.”

“You are not mad any more, Mr Strange.”

“No, I am not. I find I see things at last quite as they are.” 

When supper is finished, Childermass remains downstairs to take a pipe while Jonathan goes up to bed. A servant has been in the room while they were at dinner and set up a little cot with some coarse blankets. It will barely be long enough to house a man’s head and feet at one time, and for a minute or two Jonathan considers that he might take the cot himself and leave the greater comfort for Childermass in some sort of token, but that would require Childermass to climb over him, a proceeding he perceives would bring no great happiness to either of them, and so he resolves upon the bed. 

Childermass appears some time later, and eyes Jonathan rather frankly as if with the plain meaning that there need be no shamming of sleep, that he knows that Jonathan will watch every movement of his as he prepares for bed. He undresses with neither modesty nor conspicuous display, removing jacket, neckcloth, stockings and breeches, as he might do were he alone in his own lodgings, and settling them tidily upon the furniture: nothing indeed that ought to provoke such a great heat as that which fills Jonathan and makes him shift his own bare legs against the rough sheet of his bed. Childermass does not get into bed at once, but sits again at the dressing table careless of the chill upon his unclothed legs, and this time sets out the cards. Jonathan turns away then, not wishing to know what they say, and though his breathing does not slow and deepen into rest for a considerable time, still he looks at the wallpaper until at length sleep comes.

A deep and familiar inkpot darkness covers him, and from the very bottom of it where he rests, he hears a voice call out, a summons not felt for a little while, but recognised nonetheless, and while in his first dreams it came to him muffled and with a pricking but most indistinct sense of longing, now he hears it clearly: _Sir! You must come back!_ It is a low rough voice, and one that could not be more unlike to Arabella’s.

_Sir!_

He wakes with a great jolt of his body, as if he were being shaken out like a carpet, his pulse and breathing both most extremely agitated, his breast aching with an attachment that announces itself quite suddenly as something both ardent and well known.

In the cot at his side, Childermass is alike awake. In the light from the window, pale and sparse though it is, his eyes appear wide and surprised. It seems to Jonathan in the quiet of their dark little room as though they had shared the dream and awoken from it together in a mutual commotion of spirit. He looks awhile, and it seems impossible to speak, but in a perplexing sort of paradox, quite as impossible not to.

“John –”

“You ought to sleep.”

“John, I –”

“ _Sleep_ , sir.”

There is no magic behind it this time, nor does Jonathan drop at once into an easy slumber, but he is gentleman enough to recognise the dismissal for what it is, and forbears to press the point.

~

Save for the anxious presence of Jonathan Strange, the diligence to Venice is empty when it departs the Palazzo della Ragione at eight o’clock the following morning. The guard and coachman, having greeted Jonathan with little enthusiasm and a great expediency of activity, leave him at once to his own company within the coach, a thing quite unwelcome in his current state of mind.

The room at the inn had been likewise empty when Jonathan awoke this morning, nor had Childermass reappeared at any point while Jonathan had been dressing, shaving, and staring glumly at his image in the heavily spotted mirror. Not even during a dawdled breakfast of pastry and cold meat in the parlour, the whole of which was spent by Jonathan in watching the door for his friend’s arrival, had there been any sign of Childermass, and at last Jonathan had had to give him up and make his way to the Piazza della Frutta to take up the place in the coach. It demonstrates a degree of discretion in Childermass with which Jonathan is become quite familiar, but which he had hoped they might have forgone in their increasing intimacy, and in truth it was only the presence of Childermass’s belongings still in the room that had stopped him throwing over the expedition and hunting him down.

It makes a long drive, torn as he is between a dread and longing both of what lies behind and what lies in front, and it is not until he prepares to embark the gondola at Mestre that he begins to feel how close he is come to the end of his journey. The last time he had stood in this spot he had suffered the profound impression that he might disappear entirely, yet the current sensation is more akin to that of reappearance, of completing an emergence from the darkest sort of obscurity. How different, too, had been Jonathan’s last excursion on a boat, that of the crossing from Dover with its blasting rain, the abominable sickness of stomach he had endured, the comfort and aid of Childermass’s tea. In his relief from the rolling of his insides, he had twitted his friend for bringing the sea storm down upon them. Now the evening sun is lowering itself towards the lagoon and scattering a fall of rust and gold upon the water; what wind stirs is gentle and warm on Jonathan’s face. No tea of any kind is required to calm a difficult stomach, and if he regrets his friend’s absence from this voyage it is for quite another reason.

It is past the time for polite visits when Jonathan arrives at Villa Centofiori, a pretty brown-painted house with shutters that tilt outwards like slumberous eyelids. It is tucked into the side of a tiny dark square, and though in Venice it might earn the name of villa, yet if one of Mrs Strange’s friends from London were to see it, they would find little in it to compare with Soho-square. One thing however remains quite the same, though Jonathan had forgot it would.

“Mary!”

Mary seems to start a little to see him upon the step, though her bobbed curtsey, nod and “Good evening, sir” betray no genuine surprise.

“Mary, I am more pleased than I can say to see you here.”

That elicits a shy sort of smile. “I am glad to see you, too, sir. Mrs Strange is expecting you.” At which, she steps to the side, allowing Jonathan to enter the little house.

The candle light in the drawing-room shows yellow painted walls and a collection of modest furniture such as might be seen in any parlour of the lower county gentry of England, but amongst which sits the button-back chair upon which Jonathan had watched Mrs Strange read a book for some minutes from the other side of a brass bowl in York. She is not now reading a book, but looking up at Jonathan with wide brown eyes, and she seems so unaccountably small that Jonathan’s heart aches.

“There you are,” she says, standing to meet him, and then, “Oh, I had forgotten!”

“Forgotten what?”

“All of it.” She smiles at him, and puts a hand on his collar. “Your jacket is smudged from the journey.”

“Yes. Yes, so it is. I am sorry for it. Perhaps I should have taken a room and –”

“Please don’t be foolish. I am only so glad you are here. You look very well, Jonathan.”

“Indeed,” and he cannot help laughing at the reproof. “I feel very much better than I have for some time.”

They embrace through some shared desire, and it is a dear comfort to feel Arabella’s curls tucked under his chin and her gentle hand at his back.

“Bell, I did not think I would ever lay eyes upon you again.”

“Except in your little bowl?”

“Yes, except there.” How sweet to have that ironical smile directed upon him once more. “Why have you been hiding here?”

“No such thing! I have not been hiding – have I not allowed you to find me out? Come Jonathan,” she pulls out of his arms then, “sit down and let us talk sensibly.”

Arabella calls Mary to bring brandy and it is only when they are seated to either side of a low table that Jonathan notices upon it a green figured bowl containing a quantity of hard boiled eggs.

“Perhaps it is a little late for eggs,” she says, perceiving his glance. “Mary thought it quite perverse, but it was an impulse.”

“You truly were expecting me tonight.” He is buoyed with the hearty pleasure of being known and missed, and plucks out an egg from the bowl.

“We – I – saw you at the dock in Mestre. I did not precisely know if you would appear this evening, but you have never been one to delay when the moment seems right to you. It is a thing I have always admired in you.” Jonathan smiles at her over a mouth quite full of boiled egg, and while he suspects it makes rather a grotesque appearance, Arabella shows no sign of distaste, but smiles in return, and seems amused. “I wanted to arrange everything so that you might feel comfortable.”

“It is rather like our evenings in London, is it not?” Jonathan says, as Mary enters with a silver tray, upon it the brandy.

“This is hardly Soho-square, Jonathan. I think both our situations rather altered since that time.” She smooths a little hand over her skirt as if in demonstration of its inferior cloth or make, but in truth Jonathan cannot see any thing to fault in her, and that at least has not altered.

“Will you have some brandy, sir?”

“Thank you, Mary, I will.”

When the brandy is poured, Mary hesitates, aiming a cautious look at Arabella. “Mistress –” she begins, and seems to gesture at the parlour door with the brandy bottle, but Arabella stops her with a bright smile.

“It’s perfectly all right, Mary. Mr Strange and I will talk a little longer.”

Mary bobs a curtsey at that and takes her leave.

“I am happy to see Mary situated with you still. You were always very happy with her, and she quite devoted to you.” He takes a drink. “I am also delighted to say that this is very much better brandy than the last I had.”

Arabella takes no note of that comment, which was perhaps a trifle unguarded. “Mary is dearly valued within this household, although I fear she misses England a little even now.”

“And you do not? Will you not return?”

Arabella looks at him with a gentle frankness. “England is no longer my home.”

“But this is because – if I may ask – you are a magician are you not, Arabella? I know that you have watched me in your own little bowl. You yourself said so only just now.”

“Jonathan –”

“England is a changed place, Bell. Very much for the better. There is a great abundance of magic there now, practised by men and women both, of all classes and to all practical purposes. You would – I promise it – you would feel quite at home.”

“Jonathan, listen to me. There is a magician living here, but I do not have magic. Surely you cannot have missed it? You must know that I am not alone here.”

“Mary –?”

“No, not Mary.” Jonathan regrets the agitation that comes upon Arabella then, and makes her stand and begin arranging papers at her writing table. There is looming within him, however, a rather passionate and selfish apprehension of loss and he is hard put to conceal it.

“Are you still my wife?”

She stills and turns to face him, her hands laced together before her, and it is in a small voice indeed that she says, “I do not know. I cannot put away all former parts of myself so easily, but I am happy here. We are content, and I do not wish it another way.”

“I see. I quite understand. And it is your companion who –?”

“– Who some weeks ago found herself able to perform magic, yes. She discovered a book upon the dresser which she had not seen before; it was a copy of Belasis. We had neither of us the least notion of how it had arrived there. I had expected she would have a great aversion even to the presence of a book of magic, but within a very few days she had learnt and performed a number of spells. I asked her to look for you, and so she did, although I may tell you she disliked very much using her magic for the purpose. Jonathan, it is Emma Wintertowne who shares this house with me – Emma Pole, as you knew her, although she rather prefers her former name again.”

“Lady Pole!”

“Yes, as she once was. In fact it is her husband who has given us the means for this life. Everything of mine was lost when you went away and the houses disappeared. Sir Walter was grieved to lose sight of his wife, but he has been generous indeed. And he has never once intruded upon us here, for which we owe him a great deal of thanks.”

“But _I_ have intruded. Idiot that I am. You do not need to explain any of this to me. I have been a poor husband to you, even at the best of times.”

At this, Arabella’s expression hardens into disapproval. “Jonathan, I wish that you would drink your brandy and be sensible. I am not scolding you, and yet you are beginning to sound as sorry for yourself as if I were. Of course you have not intruded; I myself commissioned Flora to deliver a message to you in Milan. We are not hidden, not really. We only wish for our freedom and the chance to direct our own lives at last. Part of that may be said to consist in the liberty to choose who finds us out.”

Jonathan does as he is told, and the brandy fortifies somewhat. “I had thought – you will think this the purest nonsense – I had thought that I ought to offer you my protection as your husband, that you might wish to return to our marriage. Bell, I am sincerely glad that you have found a situation where you are happy.”

“There, that is better.” Arabella smiles with an increase of kindness, which fortifies yet further, then looks away. “I am happy. Here I have not just the sweet amity of marriage but – I hope you will not take it amiss – a true understanding and partnership of a kind that Emma insists cannot occur with any man.”

It is a thought that brings Jonathan up short, throwing as it does a peculiar light on his own affairs, and he is for an instant unsure of its constituting either a mirror to a concealed hope or a bald refutation of the same. In his mind’s eye Childermass rebukes him for his sentimentality.

He must be lost in that melancholy reflection for some moments, for when Arabella speaks again, she is at his side, though he had not seen her move. 

“I have caused you pain.” She places a hand upon his shoulder, which he catches up at once, and kisses in a manner he hopes to be both bracing and companionable.

“No, Bell. Not in the least. I was distracted by a small matter of my own, that is all.”

“Jonathan,” she says, and on her tongue there seem so many layers within that word, of everything from sweetness to satire, that Jonathan is stopped again by the sharp ache of having lost her.

She seems about to say something else, when there is a noise out in the hall, the parlour door opens and the other lady of the house comes into the room. Jonathan jumps up from his chair, at once removing his hand from Arabella’s.

“Miss Wintertowne.”

“Mr Strange.” She has a cape about her, and gloves, which she proceeds to remove. “Arabella foresaw that you would call this evening. For my part, I thought you might wait until the morning.”

“My apologies for the lateness of the visit. I’m afraid impulsiveness is one of my chiefest flaws, as Mrs Strange is well aware.”

Miss Wintertowne pauses with half a glove still hanging upon the end of her hand, and fixes her gaze upon him. There is in her as much of the comeliness as in the former days of Harley Street, but with the addition of a large amount of steel behind the eyes.

“Well, you are here. I hope the brandy is to your liking. It will be a happiness to Arabella to see you quite the same as you ever were.”

“Emma, do be kind.”

“Very well,” she says, “but I shall need some of that brandy.”

There is some little talk then, when the brandy is procured, that touches on Jonathan’s present journey – Miss Wintertowne, as Arabella had warned, has little good to say of a scheme to bring Mr Norrell out from the darkness – and of his companion.

“Why did you not bring Mr Childermass with you to Venice?” Arabella asks. “I should have liked to see him again.”

Jonathan smiles at her, quite as flattered as if her compliment were directed at him, then recollects himself and sets about prevaricating.

“He had some business that prevented his travelling further than Padua. Perhaps it is for the best, however. I fear Miss Wintertowne may lack your enthusiasm for the acquaintance.”

That lady neither confirms nor denies, but reaches for an egg and takes a bite from the smaller end. She blinks once or twice, looking a little dismayed, before beginning to chew, and Arabella fixes her with a hard stare while the egg is disposed of. Finally she tugs a little handkerchief from her sleeve to clean her fingers, takes a large breath, and sets her gaze upon Jonathan.

“I may be said to lack enthusiasm for the acquaintance of _any_ English magician. It is certainly true. Your Mr Childermass is not so bad as some of them. I will go so far.”

“My –”

“Mr Segundus, who was once my guardian, sought to protect me from him, but in the end he gave me back my freedom. That part at least which I could not seek for myself.” She holds up her right hand, on which no trace of egg remains, nor any sign that it was not once as whole as it now appears. Jonathan had also played his part there, but that remains unspoken. “As to the rest, I believe there is much to hold to the account of every magician in England.”

“But that is now a great number, Miss Wintertowne. A great many more perhaps than when you were last there, and some of them I believe might please you. That same Mr Segundus has opened his academy once more, so great is the demand, and is this minute working with a Miss Redruth, herself quite accomplished in the use and study of magic. So Childermass informs me.”

“Indeed?”

“Indeed. And Childermass is quite intent upon improving the lot of the new magicians, helping the poorer sort to establish a new system for their own use and thereby rise. And the same might be done for women magicians.”

“Of the _poorer_ sort?” 

“Of – of every sort, Miss Wintertowne. There are new guilds to found, and new books to be written.” He is become quite excited, with an enthusiasm he thinks must be borrowed, but which sits rather easily upon him. 

Arabella, too, is sitting straighter in her chair. “Perhaps you may help him there, Jonathan. To write those books, I mean.”

“Perhaps I might. Indeed I had not thought of it till now.” The image the thought presents is altogether a beguiling one, in which they work together in a little room that belongs to them both. “However, I do not know if he would welcome my help.”

Arabella narrows her eyes at him as if she cannot quite fathom the source of any objection. “You might suggest it to him before you decide upon his feelings in either direction. Mr Norrell may be his principal object, but he cannot be his only one.”

“Perhaps. But Childermass believes that if Mr Norrell cannot be recovered then all of England’s magic will be unbalanced and we must by necessity work apart.”

“Folly,” says Miss Wintertowne, who has been eyeing Jonathan with a measure of irony. “As if such a man were so indispensable. I cannot think of one bit of good Mr Norrell did anyone that was not to serve his own needs or others’ opinions of him, and much he did that was of the greatest evil. He would do better to stay hidden.”

“I’ll allow that he was poorly governed in his career, but the magic that destroyed your tormentor could not have been achieved without him. He saw his errors quite clearly in the end. I cannot condemn him as justly as you are able, Miss Wintertowne. Without Arabella’s influence, I might have worked quite as much evil. Indeed, when I believed her gone, in my grief I was quite ready to try the very same remedy.”

The ladies stare at him, side by side. In the eyes of one there is nothing but the coldest shock and anger, and in the other a softer sort of admonition. Arabella’s hand creeps into Miss Wintertowne’s lap to take a gentle hold of her wrist.

“And yet Arabella performed no such brutality in your case, even when she believed you entirely lost.”

Jonathan’s eyes fill unexpectedly with tears. “No, she did not. Bell, can you ever forgive me?”

There follows a scene of some feeling, such as may be expected when a marital partnership draws to its conclusion, and that in despite of the affection remaining on either side. In the end Emma Wintertowne, succumbing either to fatigue or discretion, withdraws to bid Mary set a fire in a small bedchamber in the back of the villa, and Jonathan is prevailed upon to stay until morning.

“In any case,” Mrs Strange, insists, “even if a boat could be got at this hour, there will be no chaise leaving Mestre until ten o’clock tomorrow, so it is just as well to stay here with us.”

When she stands at the chamber door later with a candle held out to him, her hair loose and a dressing gown pulled close about her middle, he hesitates before going in.

“Bell, you have always been so good. Forgive me for pursuing you here and imposing myself upon you and Miss Wintertowne in this way. I hardly knew what I was about. It is only that someone called out to me; I heard them most distinctly and urgently when I was in the dark. For a very long time I had thought it was you, but lately I have begun to perceive that perhaps it was not.”

“Jonathan, the darkness has not bestowed much new sense upon you. And you were never the most sensible of men.”

“I fear Miss Greysteel said something rather similar.”

“Miss Greysteel is a keen-sighted young person. As for you, you may have been looking at me in that bowl of yours, but I have also been looking at you. I believe you know as well as I do who it was that sought you so fervently.”

“Yes, I believe I do. Bell, it is a thing that might make me quite happy. But I have behaved badly there too. Oh, how I do blunder about!”

“Yes, you do.” She lays a little white hand upon Jonathan’s forearm, and in the eddying light of the candle her smile is filled with as much gentle condescension as he has ever seen in it. “But if I know you still, in any measure, then I am confident that you will make all right finally. You might even make him rather happy in your turn.”

He cannot help but return her smile, some terrible and unstoppable joy breaking open within him, and he lifts her hand to kiss it. “Thank you, Bell.”

A silver basin and pitcher has been left in his chamber, in all innocence, as if it might be used for washing, though Jonathan suspects no such purpose was intended or expected. Childermass, when he appears in the bowl, is sitting at the edge of a pool of dim light from a small oil burner, just enough to reveal the hangings and furnishings of the room that Jonathan had left this morning. So he has not departed yet; it is a species of opportunity and renewed chance, and raises an urging in Jonathan’s breast to go at once to the landing and hurry back to Padua that it takes some moments to subdue. Childermass is engaged upon – nothing for once. True, there is a paper and inkwell upon the table to his side, but his hands are loose upon his lap and his eyes set upon something else in the darkness of the room that Jonathan cannot see. It is a strange thing to see him thus unoccupied, who is always at some business or smoothing some way forward for another man. He is in undress, his waistcoat open and cravat discarded; an almost habitual sight for Jonathan, it nevertheless arouses a sudden deal of tenderness. He yawns and rubs at an eye with his thumb, seeming for a moment about to stir himself from his chair, but then subsides again and closes his eyes.

“There you are,” Jonathan says quietly, leaning close over the bowl. “John.”

Childermass looks up then, and stares directly into the mirror that hangs upon the wall opposite, so that he appears to look quite out of his bowl and at Jonathan himself. He unfolds himself slowly and stands, frowning, coming closer, seeming to emerge into the light of Jonathan’s own candle that lights the bowl. When he might be near enough to whisper to, near enough for Jonathan to smell the sweet tobacco scent of his hair, he lifts one bare forearm towards the water’s surface from beneath, hand stretched out, and Jonathan lowers his own forefinger in turn, to touch it to Childermass’s fingertips. Fanciful to suppose that his touch may extend as far as his gaze, but Childermass pulls his hand back at once, glaring first at it and then for several moments at the mirror, before admonishing one or other of them with a muttered “Stupid”, and retreating back into the darker part of the room.

~

The journey back to Padua, though commenced betimes on the following day, and permitting Jonathan only a hasty breakfast at Mestre before the stage is due to depart, nevertheless contrives every possible small delay: a drunken footman, a wheel thrown in the middle of a farm at Pianiga. The former necessitates a furious argument conducted in a vocabulary quite unknown to Jonathan, and a delay of some forty-five minutes while a replacement is found, in this case the drunken footman’s less drunken brother. The latter occurs when Jonathan has just begun to believe he can see the dome of the Saint Antony Basilica, and is scarcely in a humour to delay arrival by so much as a minute. There being neither servants nor labourers within, and the replacement footman being quite as drunk by this time as his brother had been at the start, Jonathan offers his own effort to reseat the wheel. Even Childermass, when he assisted with the wheel at Pontefract, had not managed to make it seem an easy thing, but after a struggle of some twenty minutes, Jonathan believes himself quite as mudded and bruised as he had been at Waterloo. A profound ache pulls at his shoulder, and when a spectacled and primly bonneted woman quite naturally hesitates before reboarding the coach, he cannot forbear barking at her in a rather ungentlemanlike manner.

It is approaching dusk by the time Jonathan climbs down from the coach in Piazza della Frutta and hurries towards the Saint Lawrence Bridge. At first sight of the inn, Jonathan thinks he has taken a wrong turning, for surely that sturdy young tree had not been growing outside it, and yet it is perforce the same place. The grey-green leaves whisper some obscure meaning to him as he knocks upon the door, but he has not the patience to listen to them.

Childermass is not in residence when he reaches their little room, though its appointments are otherwise as they had appeared last night: two narrow beds side by side; a table with oil lamp and letters spread upon it; two trunks by the window; a mirror upon which, when moistened with breath, appear four large-ish fingerprints. Jonathan’s trunk has been opened, and some of the linens within tumbled about, as if someone had been searching through it in a deal of haste, and there on the cot is the reason: the pieces of Childermass’s beechwood cane, raven and knotted shaft splintered apart. No further clues are to be found. The letter on the table is from a Mr Oliver Bolt of York concerning some Lovetts of whom Jonathan either knows or recalls nothing; the Marseille cards are collected into a tidy stack, such that he may derive no meaning from them, however inexact.

Warm and out of breath from his haste, Jonathan removes his coat and sits upon the bed. That Childermass has not departed from Padua seems certain at least. It allows for a measure of patience, and perhaps a light meal. His appetite suddenly reasserting itself in an access of relief, this last Jonathan sets about procuring at once.

The young lady and her governess, with whom they had travelled from Milan, are once again in the parlour when Jonathan descends, both dressed rather smartly and embarking upon a dish of roasted turkey in a sauce of pomegranates. It is altogether a genteel picture, and one into which Jonathan feels himself an awkward fit, perspiring in his travelling clothes, his hair a little wild perhaps and boots dirty. Nevertheless, while he waits for his pie of lamb’s kidneys to be brought out, he attempts in halting Italian to remark upon the rain now setting in, and the warmth of the parlour. The two ladies, restored from their fatigue of two nights ago, respond with a good will, in which there is almost certainly something charitable. They are promised, as far as Jonathan can understand it, to a gentleman of the lady’s mother’s acquaintance, though the description of the pleasant evening that awaits them is far beyond his facility with the language.

He is halfway through the pie when the sound of voices in the hall brings a pause in the ladies’ conversation. Jonathan looks up just as the parlour door opens and there is Childermass, his greatcoat, hat and boots wet with rain, his eyes fixed upon Jonathan in a stare of some intensity. It is a moment before either of them speak, and Jonathan is aware, albeit a little distantly, of the ladies looking from one to the other, likewise in anticipation. Jonathan’s heart beats awhile into the silence, and if he had harboured some obscure fear that the closure of an old love might have cast a newer affection into the dust behind it, he sees it is indeed not so, for the spreading warmth within him does not issue from the kidney pie. 

“There you are,” Childermass says at last.

“Yes. I returned an hour ago.”

“And you – will you –?”

“I plan to remain. At least –”

Childermass looks to his hands and begins to peel off a pair of wet woollen gloves. “Good,” he says. “I must –” 

With a nudge of his head he indicates the stairs, and Jonathan is already arising from his dinner and stumbling around the table to follow after.

The cot is still in the little room they shared two nights ago, and when Jonathan enters, Childermass is emptying some items from his pocket upon it: a letter already opened and a little silver object.

“What have you there?”

“A thing I need. Did you see the ash tree outside the inn?”

“Yes! A peculiar coincidence, although I admit I was rather distracted and did not pay it much attention.”

“It has been there since this morning. The trees are speaking to us, Mr Strange.”

“The –”

There is a knock at the door and a servant-boy appears, with a question in brisk and indecipherable Italian, in response to which Childermass hands over his greatcoat and hat, and thanks him.

“Read this,” he says to Jonathan when the boy is gone, holding out the letter.

It is another from Mr Segundus – the hand by now most familiar – considerably briefer and less to the matter of meals and conversations. It concerns the visit of Miss Redruth to Starecross Hall –

_She had read the whole of Mr Strange’s book and was animated in particular by the notion of the trees and would apply it to Vinculus’s Book. And so after some travails with the grammar, and a short spell in the old walnut box – the impropriety of which I felt rather strongly though she did not – she came to the decided opinion, with which I am now quite in agreement, that the Book itself speaks of trees and woods._

New wood shall heed the voice of the North and spring from old – _she was most insistent that this should be the meaning, at which Vinculus himself spilt a little of the ale in his jug. Childermass, it recalled to me at once the report of that trick you were observed to perform in Newark._

And a gate – _a doorway, Caroline suggests_ – shall not fall from the sky but arise from the earth.

_How this too might be made to match – Mr Strange travelled once through the rain, but if that road might instead be fashioned from some growing thing –_ ”

“Childermass –”

“It is the beechwood cane. I must try again with it.” He picks up the several pieces of it in either hand.

“Try again?”

Childermass blinks slowly up towards him as if to indicate that Jonathan is the slowest of studies. “I had it of Mr Segundus, meaning to use it to find an old friend. I tried it for a particular purpose, but it did not work as I supposed.”

There is here a conversation long waiting to be had, and it hangs now in the room with such painfully sweet promise that Jonathan hardly dares give voice to it. “Childermass, I know it was not Arabella who made the road and called me back. Even as I asked her about it, I knew it was not her. She, too, knew who it was, I think.”

Childermass sits upon the cot, with the parts of the broken stick still tightly within his grip. Jonathan aches to unpeel his fingers from it and fasten them around his own. 

“My desires were better understood than my meaning,” Childermass says.

It is a declaration beyond Jonathan’s powers to resist. He sits on the cot, too, and for a moment or two simply regards their knees side by side. 

“I am glad of it,” he says finally. “And as to this,” taking a small fragment from Childermass’s hand, “there is little that cannot be mended.”

“Aye. Another thing I had of John Segundus.” Here he sets aside the broken cane and picks up the small article he had taken from his pocket earlier. It is two little silver spoons joined together with a piece of string to form an approximate cross shape. “Restoration and rectification,” Childermass says.

“Martin Pale, of course! Have you performed it before?”

“I have seen it done well enough to remember the way.”

Under the influence of Pale’s spell, the splintered pieces of the cane in Childermass’s hand seem to melt together, and a new sheen to form among the knots of the wood. Jonathan feels an accustomed pulse and light-headedness brought about by Childermass’s magic, and grasps the opportunity to lean a little against him. The air sighs around them.

“Tomorrow we’ll take it to the forest. We’ll plant it and see what grows,” Childermass says quietly.

“So tomorrow Mr Norrell may finally return to us. And this is the conclusion.” To Jonathan it seems ending after ending after ending, and despite his weariness and longing to return by now to England, he is at once extremely reluctant to see the journey done with.

Childermass looks at him, and Jonathan perceives a frank understanding in his slow gaze. “We won’t have another chance.”

Jonathan takes Childermass’s thin brown hand and kisses the soft underside of his fingers, then smiles. “I do despise a wasted opportunity.”

Childermass does not smile precisely, but his face appears to soften with what might be either compassion or humour. He lifts his kissed hand and combs his fingers into the hair at Jonathan’s temple, pulling it further into disarray, were such a thing possible, before leaning forward and kissing Jonathan upon the lips.

They proceed more slowly than they had three nights ago in Milan. For one thing neither is so jug-bitten as then and for another Jonathan is quite as sore as he had suspected from the accident at Pianiga. Childermass hears the tale of the broken wheel when he tugs away Jonathan’s chemise to discover a large bruise upon his right shoulder, a circumstance upon which he tuts overmuch.

“I had thought at least you might be impressed by my new practical capacities,” Jonathan complains, rather speciously, as Childermass kisses his shoulder, his hands gentle upon Jonathan’s upper arms.

“That is not what affects me.”

“Then I am bound to ask what is.”

Childermass lifts a hand to Jonathan’s cheek, and nudges a curl of hair away from his face. “But I am not bound to tell you.” They kiss again and Jonathan wraps his arms around Childermass’s shoulders, tugs upwards at his shirt such that his back is bared, then his shoulders. They break apart just long enough for the shirt to be disposed of upon the floor, but Childermass has once again a dark and impatient look in his eye that sets free a flood of heat within Jonathan. They cling, breast to breast, and Jonathan breathes open-mouthed into Childermass’s damp hair, smelling the rain and trees and tobacco that dwell there.

“Do you want it?” Childermass whispers, once his hands are working at the fastening of Jonathan’s breeches, and half kissing the question into his mouth.

“What?”

Childermass pulls back. His gaze flickers, just a little frantic, between Jonathan’s mouth and eyes. “Mr Strange,” he grasps Jonathan’s unhurt shoulder in a strong grip that yet does not hide the minute shake in his fingertips. Jonathan feels much as a ragdoll might if it had a heart to beat blood around its boneless limbs, and can neither protest the formality nor rally his senses to answer the question. “Do you want it?”

“Do I –? Yes. Yes, everything.”

Breeches and stockings are alike stripped off then in short order, in despite of the reluctance of either man to leave off kissing and embracing, leaving them with little more than a single hand each to accomplish all. When they lie back upon the cot, Childermass is upon him again, their pricks hard and close, and Jonathan remembers the untutored desire he had felt for that final act, the one Childermass had spared him in Milan. It seems now the only thing that might answer the famished demand that sits within him, and he tightens his legs around Childermass’s spare thighs to push against him and bring him into some instinctive motion.

“How is it accomplished?” he asks.

“Slowly. And with oil.”

“I fear slowly will not answer, John.” At which Childermass’s eyes grow yet darker, and he shifts his lower body against Jonathan, kissing him most tenderly.

At length Childermass peels himself with some difficulty from Jonathan’s arms to procure the oil from the burner upon the writing table, and after a drawn-out business with his fingers, which goes forward from exceeding peculiar to most maddeningly teasing, he at last begins to push himself inside. It is another slow proceeding, very carefully managed and yet so sweet it seems to them both, that Childermass must stop several times while they govern themselves, gasping and gripping at each other. When he is at the furthest point, Childermass again stops and kisses Jonathan with a palpable hunger.

“Tell me what is in your head.”

Jonathan stares at him, his dark eyes and serious brow. Childermass’s hair is loosening from its tie in a way that Jonathan finds more becoming than sense would suggest. “I do not have a word for it.”

“That is not like you.”

“Do not twit me, John. I–” Childermass thrusts a little into him at that, and Jonathan’s breath stutters out over a wheeze of pleasure, “I can hardly answer for myself.”

It ends rather quickly for them both. Jonathan is so lost to rhythm and sensation, and intoxicated by the drag of Childermass’s mouth against his, that no words come when he feels the approach of orgasm, rather he clutches Childermass harder against himself, gasps and spends transfixingly sweet and abundantly between their bellies. As soon as he begins, Childermass follows as if tugged along into it, shuddering in Jonathan’s arms, mouthing at the bruise on his shoulder without any appearance of intention, and uttering some arrangement of sounds approximating Jonathan’s own name.

When it is over, Childermass does not stir from atop him for some time, but his frame heaves with irregular breaths that stand evidence that he has at least not passed out.

“I did not suppose you would come back,” he says at last, his voice muffled in Jonathan’s neck.

“You who are so often held up as the most sensible person in any room.” Jonathan sets his fingers to combing through his friend’s hair. “I do not think you even the most sensible person in this one.”

~

To the southwest of the city of Padua lie the Euganean Hills, once home to ancient Italians, still forested in the same oak and chestnut, and quick with subterranean fire. It is a spot beloved of Percy Shelley, who compared it to one of “many flowering islands” that “lie in the waters of wide agony”, and who stood upon the hills “listening to the paean With which the legion’d rooks did hail The Sun’s uprise majestical”. It may be supposed that Shelley, while learned in a great many things and naturally predisposed to wide agony, lacked a little in his knowledge of corvids, for the birds that flew about the heads of Jonathan Strange and John Childermass as they stood on the same spot the next morning, were black-billed and somewhat large for rooks.

“Well then, John. Here we are. Where do you suppose is the best spot?”

“Here on the hill.”

“Will it not be too exposed to the wind?”

“This tree will live three hundred years. It won’t fear the wind.”

Childermass plants the stick deep in the ground. At the saying of some words, there is a great buffet of magic all around, and some small leaves begin to grow upon the stick such as it has not owned since it stood a young tree in the grounds of Fountains Abbey. The magic swells and flows around them as the stick grows into a trunk, bark shows upon it, and boughs burst forth, some lifting up to the heavens, and one dipping to the ground. From the crest of the growing tree the little raven in blackened bronze grows and spreads its wings, takes off first into the void above then swoops down and flies straight through the little arch under the downcast bough and vanishes.

The ground beneath Jonathan’s feet begins then to shake. He and Childermass stagger back from the tree at the self-same time as a small figure bursts from the hidden door under the branch, stumbles several yards down the hillside, losing its little grey wig as it goes, and collapses into the long grass.

“Childermass!” the figure cries out, in evident distress, whereupon Childermass sighs and sets out down the hill towards him.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> thank you to [berry](http://archiveofourown.org/users/berry/pseuds/berry) for beta!


End file.
